Addams Family Romance

Charles Addams never could have imagined the franchise he was creating when he first began sketching a tight-knit family of ghoulish eccentrics for The New Yorker. Since those earliest comics in the late ’30s, The Addams Family has spawned multiple TV series, feature films, video games and, most recently, a musical comedy which opened on Broadway in 2010 and makes its Wisconsin premiere this month at Theatre Unchained.

Penned by Jersey Boys writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice with fittingly kooky music from The Wild Party composer Andrew Lippa, The Addams Family is dotingly faithful to its source material, save for one plot-driving deviation: Little Wednesday Addams is now a teenager nearing adulthood, and she’s fallen for a decidedly normal boy named Lucas. In a quintessential sitcom setup, the Addamses host a dinner for Wednesday’s prospective in-laws, a repressed upper-middle class couple from Ohio for whom New York City itself is a strange place, to say nothing of the Addams’ freaky Central Park mansion, with its cobwebs, torture devices and zombie butler.

The musical’s snappiest scenes keep the laughs coming quick, but even in the drier stretches that regrettably sacrifice macabre comedy for domestic drama—Gomez (Timothy J. Barnes) and Morticia Addams (Kassandra Novell) are too rich of comic creations to be wasted on a low-stakes marital strife subplot—the cast embody their characters superbly. That’s especially true of Marty Graffenius, who brings a daffy energy to his love-struck Uncle Fester, and Jaime Nyland, who’s tasked with turning the dour, emotionless Wednesday into a sympathetic romantic lead. Although these characters have already been iconically depicted many times over, this cast has no problem making them their own.

The Addams Family runs through Sept. 28 at Theatre Unchained, 1024 S. Fifth St. For tickets, call 414-391-7145.