Addams Family Musical Sets Dates for Chicago Premiere

Dates and a theater are set for the pre-Broadway world premiere of a new musical version of The Addams Family. Based on the bizarre and beloved family of characters created by cartoonist Charles Addams, the show will begin performances on November 13, 2009, at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre in Chicago and will run through January 10, 2010, prior to a Broadway opening planned for the spring of 2010. No casting has been set for the production, to be directed and designed by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch Shockheaded Peter.

No casting has been set, although Tony winners Bebe Neuwirth and Nathan Lane took part in a recent reading of the musical.

The Addams Family will feature a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice librettists of the 2006 Tony Award-winning Best Musical, Jersey Boys and music and lyrics Andrew Lippa The Wild Party. The show will be choreographed by Sergio Trujillo Jersey Boys, with lighting by Natasha Katz and musical direction by Mary-Mitchell Campbell.

In a career spanning six decades, Charles Addams created several thousand cartoons, sketches and drawings, many of which were published in The New Yorker. But it was his creation of characters that came to be known as The Addams Family that brought Addams his greatest acclaim. Addams’ drawings of Gomez, Morticia, Fester, Wednesday, Pugsley, Grandmama, Lurch and Thing served as the inspiration for multiple television series and motion pictures.

The musical version of The Addams Family will be produced by Elephant Eye Theatrical Stuart Oken, Michael Leavitt and Five Cent Productions and Roy Furman.