The Adams Family 1st Preview... — Page 3

Did they cut Terrence Mann's squid love song?

I haven't seen anything mentioned about it, that was just bad.

From what I saw in Chicago, there were enough really fun bits and good songs that the show was definitely salvageable.

I haven't seen anyone mention the use of the curtains and sets. The half pulls and the strange set movement, for seemingly no purpose bothered me in Chicago.

What utter nonsense about the Addams family being "self-aware."

They should be no more self-aware of being weird to the rest of the world than the Beales do.

If they are self-aware, there is no comedy.

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"Mistake #2: Reading Hedy Weiss in general. Did you read the Tribune review? Or all those posts from people in Chicago who didn't like the show?"

Never should one read Hedy Weiss. Her review of Miss Saigon a few years ago wasn't so much a review as it was a tirade against the French. In fact, I don't think she even mentioned the show! Her review for the national tour of Wicked was just as bad, calling Schwartz a self-loathing Jew and comparing the costumes to the uniforms worn by concentration camp captives.

No.

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Yes.

Yes and no. Rather than being her main concern, it's part of a larger issue (see my earlier post).

Yes.

She has one joke about texting but no specific reference to an iPhone. Grandma doesn't reference marijuana specifically (Morticia does, in reference to Grandma) but it's clear she's done her share of drugs of various kinds.

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I agree with you Joey. No one thinks they are strange. That doesn't equate with not realizing that others may be different.

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Just got back, and that was probably one of the worst things I've ever seen! Complete mess all around. The best part was Jackie Hoffman who was of course hilarious. Other than that what a waste of $41.50

I haven't seen the show, but after reading all these posts, I'm still sure that this show was never created because someone had a top-notch creative vision of musicalizing The Addams Family and give it a crafted theatrical approach that belonged nowhere but on the stage.

Instead, it all still sounds to me as a group of producers who thought of a (dusty) franchise, then imposed a script, a score, and a couple of B (roadway) celebrities to it in the hopes to make it a new money-making hit.

Lame.

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On the other hand, the worse the general consensus, the more Mr and Mrs Roxy will LOVE IT!

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Ha ha, I wonder who has the shill groupies Bebe or Her Majesty Lane. Or both.

I mean, listen to the applause after this. If it was me, I think I might have booed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15n3WtVTLxM

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BlaX -- I'm confused. You're assigning motivation to people you haven't met about a show you haven't seen.

Mind you, I haven't met them either but I just can't imagine that the producers of the show (individuals, not corporations like a Disney or a Dreamworks) would raise anywhere from $12-$18 million (just guessing based on industry standards) without a legitimate belief that the creative team writing the show had come up with an interesting and worthwhile concept for musicalizing the characters and the story. If the goal was purely financial, it would have been far safer to hire Paul Rudnick to adapt his own screenplay from the film, hire a more experienced Broadway composer and hire someone like Jerry Zaks from the get-go. But they didn't do that (and some would probably say maybe they SHOULD have).

Of course, it doesn't mean they've created a good show -- yes, I clearly think so but others clearly don't. But it seems kinda backwards to me to use the fact that some people have had such passionately negative reactions to the piece to retroactively pre-suppose the producers' motivations in bringing the show to New York. Even in the crazy, unpredictable theatre business, there are far less risky and less stressful undertakings than trying to create a new musical, let alone with a relatively unproven creative team and such an expensive cast.

PS I doubt it would make a difference to your opinion -- which seems to be so conclusively negative despite having not seen the show -- but the clip you posted appears to be b-roll from the show in Chicago, using a song that is no longer in the show as a backing track.

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Updated On: 3/10/10 at 01:11 AM

Blaxx,

OK, well argued and I hear your point. I would quibble only with the following:

From that point, it's hard not to be cynical about opening any kind of Broadway show that has no definite artistry behind it, and it needs to keep adjusting to please its audience.

I have trouble accepting the concept of "no artistry". I understand that some dislike the show, some vehemently so. But to suggest that there is no artistry whatsoever on display is disingenuous at best and purposely injurious at worst.

Also, are you suggesting that any show that undergoes change to better satisfy its audience is somehow being unfaithful to its artistic underpinnings? Can't a show change in an effort to marry its artistic aspirations with audience expectations? Decades of shows that have changed in out-of-town tryouts and/or NY previews and turned out successful would suggest this is achievable.

But this still seems to me as trying to disguise a money making machine behind legitimate artists (which obviously never worked, as I am sure that when artists compromise their own creative needs to try to create for someone else with a huge pressure like Broadway, never works).

Well first, using legitimate artists to interpret supposedly sure-fire cash cow material has worked at least once -- see Julie Taymor and "The Lion King". Sure, as "Little Mermaid" and "Tarzan" prove, success with this technique is the exception rather than the rule, but since the lead producer on "Addams" was previously the production executive at Disney who oversaw "Lion King", I think it's likely that his hopes were to achieve a financial AND artistic success, rather than one at the expense of the other.

Now I will grant you that the writers and producers clearly saw a need to modify some of the original creative concepts when it became clear in Chicago that the piece was not resonating with audiences as all of them surely hoped it would. But what is wrong with that? If making adjustments and refinements to make an artistic work in progress more satisfying for its intended audience is inherently "compromise" (as you seem to be suggesting it is), then all we'd ever have is the first draft of anything.

I suspect you would counter that if the insistence upon changes came solely from the producers (whose motives you seem to believe are not just solely financial, but almost nefariously so), then therein lies the problem. I might even agree with you if indeed any of us could be truly certain that's actually what happened. I would only offer, however, that artists can be just as fallible in their artistic choices as producers, so you can't use the ends to retroactively define the means. That is, the fact that you believe "Addams" to be so truly inferior doesn't offer any specific into how it got to be that way. It certainly doesn't prove, as you seem to be asserting, that the creatives were somehow helpless victims at the mercy of the producers' demands.

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I have trouble accepting the concept of "no artistry". I understand that some dislike the show, some vehemently so. But to suggest that there is no artistry whatsoever on display is disingenuous at best and purposely injurious at worst.

But I never claimed for the show to have "no artistry", I said no definite artistry.

The Lion King, for example, had a well thought and rounded concept behind it, and it raised the material to work as a theatrical piece, independent from the source material.
I just fail to notice that to be the case here, it all seems to be adjusted and revised for the piece to survive as a business.

In principle, there is nothing wrong with it, but I just sense the trend of imposing random plots to well-know characters (and without focused direction) usually go nowhere. They are neither critical nor financial hits, and at the cost of a Broadway mounting, I'd think that the trend not working would be obvious to the producers. I keep updating the "Failed Movies to Musicals" thread, and even though Addams doesn't come directly from the big screen, all those shows have proven that, unless the franchise is fresh and hot, a brand new musical adaptation of an "older" film,TV show, etc. is nothing most audiences are willing to invest on.

A Harry Potter musical? Makes sense financially, even if it is a trainwreck.

Bewitched: The Musical? The Goonies: The Musical? I Dream of Jeannie: The Musical? Yeah, think again.

Yet, somehow, from Big to Urban Cowboy to Footloose to Saturday Night Fever, from 9 to 5 and Shrek and everything in between, we keep hearing these ideas coming up with a bizarre excitement I just don't get, as they flop on Broadway one by one.

Most Broadway shows don't turn a profit, I would think you might as well do it with more artistic integrity than that (not assuming Addams has none, but...)

I just get the feeling producers just pick random hits of the past in hopes one would suddenly make it. To be honest, I just don't know why producers nowadays just don't get that people are just not that invested in "adapting nostalgia". They liked the originals, not this - time might prove me wrong, but I doubt it will.

And of course there are creative merits, I just doubt that the piece as hole had these merits as the primary purpose of the production, then the plots get so convoluted that it's a mess.

That would be like saying that Spider-Man is opening on Broadway for the love of art, and not because they would like to bank as much as they can with it.

But, you know, you are right about judging without seeing. I'll just wait and check it out, and if I think differently I'll apologize for passing judgment prematurely.

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