The Addams Family

They’re creepy, kooky and instantly recognizable. The Addams family, that comically death-obsessed clan created by New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams in 1938, successfully conquered all manner of media — print, television, movies — before finally getting the multimillion-dollar Broadway musical treatment in 2010. And on paper, this grand dark family looked poised to vanquish the Great White Way.

That list of assets — Stuart Oken as producer, Nathan Lane as Gomez, Bebe Neuwirth as Morticia and $14 million in sales before the show started previews — would seem to add up to a surefire smash. The musical also had Andrew Lippa, composer-lyricist of Off-Broadway’s The Wild Party, book writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice of Jersey Boys, and the hot directing-design team of Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, crafters of the Off-Broadway hit Shockheaded Peter.

Director McDermott left the team during the show’s Chicago tryout (Crouch stayed on as designer), and Tony winner Jerry Zaks took over as “creative consultant.” Audiences dug the show (and loved its stars), but when it finally opened on Broadway, many critics weighed in with negative reviews. Still, by the time the Broadway version of The Addams Family gives its final performance on New Year’s Eve, the show will have enjoyed a run of more than 800 performances.

The touring Addams Family just hit the road last month, and it arrives at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts on Tuesday for a perfectly timed pre-Halloween run. And anyone who caught the musical on Broadway will notice that the show has evolved. Songs have been cut, others added. The plot now focuses on a crisis in the heretofore happy marriage of Gomez and Morticia. The work, says producer Oken, was aimed at making The Addams Family the show the creative team always knew it could be.

“On Broadway, we aimed high but missed,” Oken says. “This show had all the trappings of being that big hit musical, but the subject matter required it to be done with great finesse, and it wasn’t. Whose fault was that? Mine. I hired the original team, and when it broke down, we had already invested years followed by six intense months of work on the show. Everyone was spent.”

Oken thought the show didn’t get its storytelling right, a problem that has plagued many a new musical. But he wasn’t about to give up on a show that can have a long life on its American tour and in productions around the world. The story got fixed, and Oken believes audiences at the new-and-improved Addams Family are far more engaged and enthusiastic.

“It all starts with the story … If you don’t have a strong dramatic underpinning beneath the comedy, what’s the point?” he says. “We now have a much better narrative.”

The story centers around grownup daughter Wednesday falling for a nice, normal boy — a horrifying prospect to her macabre-oriented parents. She wins Gomez over but convinces him to keep her secret, though Morticia can’t abide secrets. The marital crisis that follows is the show’s new wrinkle.

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