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"  Musicals derived from animated cartoons have been a Broadway staple at least since Beauty and the Beast opened the door in 1994 and The Lion King walked through it in 1997. Even comic strips such as Li&amp;#039;l Abner have occasionally made successful shows. But the creators of one of the most anticipated new musicals of the season have set themselves an even harder challenge, which was, as Andrew Lippa, the show&amp;#039;s songwriter, put it, &amp;quot;to capture two-dimensional characters and make them both recognizably human and recognizably funny.&amp;quot; Indeed, The Addams Family, which opens this month, is not based on the campy 1960s television show or on the three movie adaptations in the 1990s, but on original Charles Addams drawings as seen mostly in The New Yorker from 1933 to 1988. Creepy and kooky they may be, but narrative they&amp;#039;re not.  The approach was bold, as was hiring members of the design/ direction team of Britain&amp;#039;s Improbable theater, who staged the brilliantly macabre Shockheaded Peter off Broadway in 2005. And though the producers hedged their bets by casting stars Nathan Lane as Gomez and Bebe Neuwirth as Morticia, there still remained the question of plot\u2014and not the graveyard kind. Lippa, along with the writers of the megahit Jersey Boys, ended up &amp;quot;underscoring the word family&amp;quot;: When teenage daughter Wednesday falls in love with a &amp;quot;normal&amp;quot; boy, she finds herself &amp;quot;interested in bunny rabbits and flowers and birds,&amp;quot; Lippa says, &amp;quot;and it&amp;#039;s scaring the hell out of her.&amp;quot; The older Addamses are also troubled by this rebellion, and when the boy&amp;#039;s parents show up, the family starts to fray.  On a musical level, this story meant finding a distinct sound for each member of the clan: a Spanish quality for Gomez, a little gypsy fiddle for Morticia, old-school vaudeville for Fester, and contemporary pop for Wednesday (Lippa listened to Kings of Leon and Evanescence to get her vibe right). On an emotional level, it meant a surprising discovery: Even though they&amp;#039;re ghouls, the Addamses have something to say to the rest of us about accepting ambivalence. &amp;quot;You can&amp;#039;t know light if you don&amp;#039;t know dark,&amp;quot; Lippa says, &amp;quot;nor dark if you don&amp;#039;t know light.&amp;quot;  Are the Addamses really that universal? The producers sure hope so; they have $16.5 million riding on it. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/reviews/a11008/stage-fright-the-addams-family-438452/>