Lippa, Brickman & Elice to Collaborate on Addams Family Musical

Composer Andrew Lippa The Wild Party and librettists Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice Jersey Boys plan to collaborate on The Addams Family, a new musical based on characters, cartoons and sketches by cartoonist Charles Addams. The show, which is aiming for the 2009-2010 Broadway season after an out-of-town tryout, marks the first time Addams' work will serve as the basis for a stage production. Improbable Theater founders Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch Shockheaded Peter will direct and design The Addams Family.

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 the artist 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. Theatrical rights to Addams' work have been granted by the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation to Elephant Eye Theatrical EET, a Broadway development and production company formed in 2005 by Stuart Oken, Michael Leavitt and Five Cent Productions.