The Addams Family

#483 - The Addams Family (Legacy - feat. Steve Bebout, Rick Ellis, Rebekah Hess)

Following the journey of The Addams Family has been surprising. Before I started, I wasn’t even sure the original creative team would want to go on record with me about the show’s tumultuous development. And yet, their gracious excitement to jump back into the world of The Addams Family showed me something that I hadn’t experienced as a member of the Broadway cast: many people like this show. First and foremost on that list was book co-author Rick Elice, who enjoyed getting his hands dirty as he wrote and rewrote the book to uncover clearer and more specific obstacles for his characters. Also on that list were Dontee Kiehn and Steve Bebout who, after closing the Broadway and national tours, went on to stage many, many well-received productions of the musical around the globe. And then there were those who are mounting the show now: the teachers and students creating little Addams Families of their own all across the country.

#478 - The Addams Family (Rock Ridge High School - feat. Anthony Cimino-Johnson, Rebekah Hess)

In learning about how The Addams Family found popularity after its initial professional mountings, I wanted to dig one level deeper. Thanks to Jim Hoare at Theatrical Rights Worldwide, I had learned why the show was a popular choice for amateur and student groups. Beyond all of the reasons a school would choose The Addams Family, I wanted to know about their experience producing the show: How did their mountings vary from the professional production I had heard about, both those in the U.S. and around the world? And were these students able to experience a kind of joy working on the show that I didn’t experience in the Broadway company? Luckily, Jim himself was able and willing to connect me with one of the first high schools to produce an amateur production of The Addams Family: Rock Ridge High School in Ashburn, Virginia. A thriving theatre program with not one, but two full time theatre teachers, Rock Ridge produced the show as its fall musical in the 2017-2018 school year. And lucky for me, I was able to speak to both of those theatre teachers about how their students experienced the show...

#473 - The Addams Family (Student Productions, feat. Jim Hoare)

In my conversations with the original creative team of The Addams Family, I was learning how the show was refined and restructured to become a success on tour and around the world. But this wasn’t bridging the gap between these professional productions and the success the show has seen in schools and non-professional settings. So I reached out to the folx who were in charge of sharing The Addams Family with legions of schools across North America: Theatrical Rights Worldwide.  With a mission to cultivate and extend the production life of musicals to all theatrical marketplaces, TRW is responsible for licensing amateur productions of theatrical properties to student and amateur producers across the country and (in fact, as their name suggests) the world. I spoke with Jim Hoare, their Executive Vice President of Education and Community Initiatives about how the show became a part of the TRW catalogue. A former high school theatre teacher himself, he has directed over one hundred shows and musicals, including the first high school production of Once On This Island and the world’s first production of Les Miserables, School Edition. Over the phone, Jim shared expert knowledge of what has made The Addams Family such a popular choice for amateur licensing. Here’s our conversation...

#464 - The Addams Family (International Productions, feat. Steve Bebout. Dontee Kiehn)

In my journey to chronicle the transformation of The Addams Family musical through its many incarnations, I was starting to understand what made the show so unique. Most first national tours are essential replicas of the Broadway production, but The Addams Family’s was not. Launching in the fall of 2011, the touring version of the show turned the focus onto the family, including a wedding in the curtain call. It changed the primary conflict from between Wednesday and her parents to between the parents themselves, as I learned from the show’s co-writer Rick Ellis.. It included a lot of new music and musical staging for both Gomez and Morticia that highlighted that conflict, as I heard from associate choreographer Dontee Kiehn. And it doubled down on the humor, adding as many jokes as could fit into the script and staging said associate director Steve Bebout.  And those changes worked. All three of those original creative members - Rick, Dontee and Steve - said that the continued clarification of the script, score and staging made the national tour an unequivocal success. Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune wrote, “It’s hard to think of another show that has been revised so heavily and, for the most part, successfully, by its admirably indefatigable original authors and composer.” But I started to wonder… was all that success a fluke? Was the tour just a success in comparison to what had come before? So I delved into the show’s next professional stagings, international productions with the same design, staging and style as the show’ national tour. Lovingly referred to as “replica productions,” the first international production opened in Sao Paulo Brazil in 2012, transferring to Rio de Janeiro the following year. Also in 2013, two replica productions were mounted in Australia and Argentina. The final replica production opened in Mexico City the following year. And luckily for my research, both original associate choreographer Dontee Kiehn and original associate director Steve Bebout were involved in mounting many of them...

#459 - The Addams Family (feat. Steve Bebout)

One of the not-so secret secrets in this show about secrets is that The Addams Family went through massive structural changes multiple times on its way to becoming the most popular musical in America. Many of the changes were noted in my previous discussions with Rick Elice and Dontee Kiehn: solidifying the focus on the family, the addition of the wedding curtain call. But both Rick and Dontee had been with the show since before rehearsals for its pre-Broadway tryout in Chicago. I wanted to speak to someone who was a part of the changes made on the show’s journey to Broadway. So I called up Steve Bebout. Steve Bebout has worked as the associate director on four massive Broadway musicals, including Something Rotten!, The Book of Mormon and Sister Act. But, like me, The Addams Family was Steve’s Broadway debut. We both initially were outsiders entering the world of this lumbering imperfect production. So I wanted to get his take on what made the show work from when he first joined the team in late 2009.