Addams Family Therapy...

So the show needs a little work before heading out east - I think it has a lot of potential and I am planning to see the final show on January 10 - anyone wanna come? (PS Who died and made Chris Jones the king of Chicago theater critics? I don't usually read the Tribune and so had no idea he was considered "the city's most influential theater critic" I certainly am not that influenced by him...)


From Today's New York Times... December 29, 2009
Revisions for ‘Addams Family’ By PATRICK HEALY
The producers of “The Addams Family,” one of the major new musicals scheduled for Broadway this spring, announced on Monday that they have hired the Tony Award-winning director Jerry Zaks to take over the $16.5 million production and supervise significant changes.

Based on The New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams, “The Addams Family” began its pre-Broadway tryout in Chicago this month and received several positive reviews from critics — but also a pointedly tough one full of criticism from that city’s most influential theater critic, Chris Jones of The Chicago Tribune, who concluded that the show “needs to be funnier and more visually spontaneous.”

Echoing parts of The Tribune review, the musical’s lead producers, Stuart Oken and Roy Furman, said that the plot needed to focus more tightly on the Addams family members and that all — starting with Gomez (played by Nathan Lane) and Morticia (Bebe Neuwirth) — needed their eccentric and subversive personalities clearly established in dialogue and song before the main action of the plot begins.

The feedback from critics, colleagues and friends, Mr. Oken said, “is that perhaps we were taking a little too much for granted assuming that the audience walks in with the relationship with the Addams family fully intact, and we didn’t appropriately reconnect the audience to the family members.”

No one on the creative team has left the show or been fired, Mr. Oken said, with Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch (both Broadway newcomers) still listed as the directors and production designers, and Mr. Zaks billed as creative consultant. But when asked who was running the show from here on, Mr. Oken replied, “Jerry, with Phelim and Julian having meaningful input.”

Mr. Zaks is close to Mr. Lane, having directed him in the long-running Broadway musical revivals of “Guys and Dolls” in 1992 and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” in 1996, for which Mr. Lane won the Tony Award for best actor in a musical. Mr. Oken and Mr. Furman said Mr. Lane neither demanded nor requested that Mr. Zaks or any other show doctor be hired.

Mr. Zaks was not available for comment on Monday, his assistant said, but relayed a prepared statement in an e-mail message, saying that he “enjoyed the show enormously” and that he was delighted to “take this original musical to the next level.”

Mr. Zaks had been scheduled to direct “All About Me,” another new musical on Broadway this spring, but Mr. Oken said that he and Mr. Zaks asked the lead producer of that show, Jeffrey Richards, to release Mr. Zaks, and that he had done so.

The two lead “Addams” producers were at pains in a telephone interview on Monday to emphasize that the show was not in trouble, with Mr. Furman volunteering three times that hiring Mr. Zaks was “not being done defensively or out of weakness.” But they acknowledged that the musical, which is capitalized at $16.5 million for Broadway, needs changes to improve its hopes for a long run and a potentially lucrative life as a touring production.

Broadway producers have a long history of using so-called show doctors to make fixes, from Jerome Robbins to Neil Simon to, most recently, the Tony Award-winning choreographer Rob Ashford, who assisted on “Shrek the Musical.”

Mr. Jones, the theater critic, as well as some theater producers who have seen “The Addams Family,” said the cast members were well matched to their parts, but that some lacked enough big numbers and charming moments. Mr. Jones also noted that Ms. Neuwirth “looks like she’s not having much fun,” a point that the two lead producers denied. They added that Ms. Neuwirth (a Tony Award winner for “Chicago” and “Sweet Charity”) did not ask that the musical’s directors be replaced by Mr. Zaks or someone else.

None of the cast members could be reached for comment on Monday.