The Addams Family

In learning about how The Addams Family found popularity after its initial professional mountings, I wanted to dig one level deeper. Thanks to Jim Hoare at Theatrical Rights Worldwide, I had learned why the show was a popular choice for amateur and student groups. Beyond all of the reasons a school would choose The Addams Family, I wanted to know about their experience producing the show: How did their mountings vary from the professional production I had heard about, both those in the U.S. and around the world? And were these students able to experience a kind of joy working on the show that I didn’t experience in the Broadway company? Luckily, Jim himself was able and willing to connect me with one of the first high schools to produce an amateur production of The Addams Family: Rock Ridge High School in Ashburn, Virginia. A thriving theatre program with not one, but two full time theatre teachers, Rock Ridge produced the show as its fall musical in the 2017-2018 school year. And lucky for me, I was able to speak to both of those theatre teachers about how their students experienced the show...

In my conversations with the original creative team of The Addams Family, I was learning how the show was refined and restructured to become a success on tour and around the world. But this wasn’t bridging the gap between these professional productions and the success the show has seen in schools and non-professional settings. So I reached out to the folx who were in charge of sharing The Addams Family with legions of schools across North America: Theatrical Rights Worldwide.  With a mission to cultivate and extend the production life of musicals to all theatrical marketplaces, TRW is responsible for licensing amateur productions of theatrical properties to student and amateur producers across the country and (in fact, as their name suggests) the world. I spoke with Jim Hoare, their Executive Vice President of Education and Community Initiatives about how the show became a part of the TRW catalogue. A former high school theatre teacher himself, he has directed over one hundred shows and musicals, including the first high school production of Once On This Island and the world’s first production of Les Miserables, School Edition. Over the phone, Jim shared expert knowledge of what has made The Addams Family such a popular choice for amateur licensing. Here’s our conversation...

In my journey to chronicle the transformation of The Addams Family musical through its many incarnations, I was starting to understand what made the show so unique. Most first national tours are essential replicas of the Broadway production, but The Addams Family’s was not. Launching in the fall of 2011, the touring version of the show turned the focus onto the family, including a wedding in the curtain call. It changed the primary conflict from between Wednesday and her parents to between the parents themselves, as I learned from the show’s co-writer Rick Ellis.. It included a lot of new music and musical staging for both Gomez and Morticia that highlighted that conflict, as I heard from associate choreographer Dontee Kiehn. And it doubled down on the humor, adding as many jokes as could fit into the script and staging said associate director Steve Bebout.  And those changes worked. All three of those original creative members - Rick, Dontee and Steve - said that the continued clarification of the script, score and staging made the national tour an unequivocal success. Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune wrote, “It’s hard to think of another show that has been revised so heavily and, for the most part, successfully, by its admirably indefatigable original authors and composer.” But I started to wonder… was all that success a fluke? Was the tour just a success in comparison to what had come before? So I delved into the show’s next professional stagings, international productions with the same design, staging and style as the show’ national tour. Lovingly referred to as “replica productions,” the first international production opened in Sao Paulo Brazil in 2012, transferring to Rio de Janeiro the following year. Also in 2013, two replica productions were mounted in Australia and Argentina. The final replica production opened in Mexico City the following year. And luckily for my research, both original associate choreographer Dontee Kiehn and original associate director Steve Bebout were involved in mounting many of them...

One of the not-so secret secrets in this show about secrets is that The Addams Family went through massive structural changes multiple times on its way to becoming the most popular musical in America. Many of the changes were noted in my previous discussions with Rick Elice and Dontee Kiehn: solidifying the focus on the family, the addition of the wedding curtain call. But both Rick and Dontee had been with the show since before rehearsals for its pre-Broadway tryout in Chicago. I wanted to speak to someone who was a part of the changes made on the show’s journey to Broadway. So I called up Steve Bebout. Steve Bebout has worked as the associate director on four massive Broadway musicals, including Something Rotten!, The Book of Mormon and Sister Act. But, like me, The Addams Family was Steve’s Broadway debut. We both initially were outsiders entering the world of this lumbering imperfect production. So I wanted to get his take on what made the show work from when he first joined the team in late 2009.

The original production of The Addams Family was choreographed by Tony Award winner Sergio Trujillo. Once a Broadway ensemblist himself, The Addams Family came along when Sergio had four productions running simultaneously on Broadway: our show, the long-running Jersey Boys, the sparse but beautiful musical staging in Next to Normal, and the Tony-Award winning production of Memphis. With this many shows under his purview, Sergio employed a team of talented associate choreographers to maintain his vision and keep the staging clean. And at The Addams Family, Sergio’s associate was the highly kind and highly capable Dontee Keihn. Also a former ensemblist, Dontee had been in the original Broadway ensemble of the famed 42nd Street revival, as well as the Bernadette Peters-led revival of Gypsy. Her journey with The Addams Family began as the associate choreographer for the show’s pre-Broadway tryout in Chicago. She maintained that position for the show’s Broadway run, as well as the national tour and stagings in both Brazil and Australia. She then took over the dual roles of associate director and associate choreographer for two more “replica” productions in Argentina and Mexico City. She was with the show as long as anybody, so she knows the staging of The Addams Family intimately and thoroughly.

My first stop on this journey was reaching out to an old colleague, Rick Elice. Along with Marshall Brickman, Rick wrote the book for the musical adaptation of The Addams Family. Rick and I’s path crossed a handful of times during my tenure with the original Broadway production: he was in the room when I had my final audition, he was in the building to put in new leads or when the show closed on New Year’s Eve 2011. But I mostly knew Rick from being the husband of our leading man, Roger Rees, who took over the role of Gomez Addams two months into my run. Last month, I sent an email to Rick for the first time in more than nine years. Imagine when he replied within 24 hours, excited about the opportunity to discuss the show. In the years since, Rick wrote the script for Peter and the Starcatcher, The Cher Show, and has maintained the multiple companies of his show Jersey Boys, currently the 12th longest running show in Broadway history.

It was supposed to be the biggest Broadway show of the season. Two theatre titans taking on two of the most familiar roles in popular culture. The combination of wildly successful source material and innovative theatremakers were sure to create a theatrical juggernaut. And the public agreed: advanced ticket sales for the show were the largest of any Broadway production to date. And then… it opened.  Many jeered the production, but none said it as succinctly as The New York Times’ Ben Brantley, when began his review with the following quote: “Imagine, if you dare, the agonies of the talented people trapped inside the collapsing tomb called The Addams Family. Being in this genuinely ghastly musical must feel like going to a Halloween party in a strait-jacket. A strangled voice inside you keeps gasping, ‘He-e-e-lp! Get me out of here!’” And then, in early 2016 the Educational Theatre Association had released their annual survey of the most-produced musicals in high schools across the country in the 2014-2015 school year, and The Addams Family was the most popular high school musical in the country. How was this possible? I thought high schools performed musical theatre canon - Broadway megahits like Oklahoma! and Les Miserables. How did our unloved little musical become so popular? Sure, we are only talking about high schools but it means something that for half a decade more future theatremakers and theatrelovers have learned the lyrics to “When You’re An Addams” than any other song in the musical theatre canon.