Theater is about to get extra-kooky with the Philadelphia premiere of “The Addams Family,” a new Broadway musical based on the eccentric family created by cartoonist Charles Addams.
The darkly comic family, featuring unforgettable characters like Gomez, Morticia, Wednesday, Pugsley, Uncle Fester, Cousin Itt, Thing and Lurch, has been the inspiration for a number of TV shows, cartoons and movies since the 1960s. Out actor Shaun Rice, who plays Uncle Fester in the production, said the show is a mish-mash of takes on the family, from literature and television.
“They wanted to go back to the feel of the original drawings from Charles Addams,” Rice said. “But it really has a feel comedy-wise from the TV show. It almost feels like an extended episode with music.”
Even though there has been some kind of Addams Family project every decade since the TV show debuted, Rice said he still sees some people in the audience who are being introduced to the family for the first time.
“We’re getting a lot of families that come,” he said. “It’s been a while since the movies were out. I watched them growing up and the cartoons. So we’re getting a lot of people who don’t have any exposure to the Addams Family except for what they see that night and we’re getting people who knew the TV show back in the day. It’s kind of fun to see the audience reaction and relive stuff with these characters.”
Rice, who has been in a lot of Broadway plays based on popular characters — including “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” “Gilligan’s Island: The Musical,” “Curious George Live” — said that so far Uncle Fester has been his favorite role to play.
“When you look at the original drawings, he’s a loner,” he said. “He rarely appears with the family as a whole. He’s always with one or two of them or by himself off in the house. In the show he serves as the narrator so we see the family through his eyes. He’s got an old song-and-dance-man kind of feel. So all of his songs are Vaudevillian. It’s a lot of fun to watch the show and have the audience experience things through what he is seeing.”
Rice said the Addams family’s inability to conform to others’ expectations of normality is a big part of their charm.
“They are very odd,” he said. “They have an off kind of feel to them but they are very lovable and relatable. Everyone has an Uncle Fester or knows a kid who loves pulling wings off of flies and experimenting and things like that. It’s fun to watch them get to a crazy TV-sitcom level that you can laugh at.”
The Kimmel Center presents “The Addams Family” March 19-24 at The Academy of Music, 240 S. Broad St. For more information or tickets, call 215-790-5800.