WaterTower Drains Life and Laughs from Mystery of Irma Vep; at Fair Park, Addams Family Lacks Snap

A A A Comments (0) By Elaine Liner Thursday, Oct 11 2012

A new central plot conflict has been added wherein Gomez (played by Douglas Sills) and Morticia (clunky Sara Gettelfinger) have a fight and make up with what's supposed to be a sexy tango. (It isn't; you'll see better footwork by Bristol Palin on Dancing with the Stars.) And there are new songs, including an opening number (snap, snap) explaining the Addams' sepulchral weirdness for those who need a reminder that it's all based on the 1960s TV series and the two later movie comedies inspired by cartoonist Charles Addams' characters.

Cut after the Broadway production is a love song from the second act, "In the Arms," that was sung by Wednesday's fiance's mother (Gaelen Gilliland) to a giant puppet squid with which she'd just had sex. We get the squid-free version, darn it. (We should protest with signs saying "Octopi this!")

Mark Oristano

Bryan T. Donovan and Regan Adair don't embrace all the comedy potential in The Mystery of Irma Vep.

Details

The Mystery of Irma Vep: A Penny Dreadful

Continues through October 21 at WaterTower Theatre, Addison. Call 972-450-6232.

The Addams Family Musical

Continues through October 21 at the Music Hall at Fair Park. Call 800-982-2787.

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The jokes in The Addams Family are strictly stale calamari.

"Do you have a little girls' room?" asks the normal mom.

"We used to," answers Gomez in his cheesy Latin accent. "But we let them all go."

More child-abduction humor, please, said no one ever.

Uncle Fester (Blake Hammond) strums a banjo and croons to the moon. Lurch (Zachary James) looms large. Pugsly (13-year-old Patrick D. Kennedy) briefly erases the gloom with his showy front-of-curtain solo, "What If." Cousin ITT appears for a second or two. As the deadpan Wednesday, Cortney Wolfson sings loud enough to wake the dead. Just not quite loud enough to bring this patched-together Frankenstein of a musical to life.