About the work
The Addams Family is a musical by Andrew Lippa (music and lyrics) with a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, premiered on Broadway in 2010. It is based on the macabre cartoon characters of Charles Addams.
Plot
The morbid but loving Addams family faces a crisis: daughter Wednesday has fallen in love with the perfectly normal young Lucas from a conventional family and wants to marry him. When the prospective in-laws come to dinner at the eerie mansion, two worlds collide. Gomez is caught between loyalty to his daughter and to his wife Morticia, from whom he hides the engagement. A turbulent evening full of secrets, confessions, and family chaos leads, in the end, to love and reconciliation.
Cultural significance
The Addams Family brought the iconic characters, known from cartoons, film, and TV series, to the musical stage and became, despite mixed reviews, a commercial audience success. Lippa's score captures the family's dark humour and offbeat warmth. The work is especially popular at regional, school, and touring stages and celebrates otherness as lovable normality.