A few nights ago I was flipping channels and happened upon the end of a segment on David Letterman’s show (yeah, we get it here but I can’t stand him or the show). I just caught him saying thanks to a very strange looking Nathan Lane (who I like). It seemed to be a Halloween thing. But because Nathan Lane was there, I got curious and in a few seconds heard The Addams Family. Well, the two and two clicked and it was clear the TV show has been turned into a musical. (One doesn’t have to hear Letterman say it: the mere fact that Lane is in a show usually suggests to me it’s going to be a musical)

Follow up:

Normally I wouldn’t care much or write about it, but it turns out this is yet another in the recent upsurge of staged musicals of well-known films (or TV shows in this case) using puppetry. Let’s see: The Lion King, Shrek the Musical, Finding Nemo, and yes, now, The Addams Family.

Naturally, by the time it gets to Australia another ten will have appeared in the US (neither Shrek nor FN have come here yet), so I went hunting for a bit of video. (I actually managed to track down the Letterman clip, but no puppets! )

If you’re curious, the puppetry is done by Basil Twist. So far, I’m not sure I’d like the musical (I’m not sure the Addams would really spend so much time singing so, well, joyfully. Also, as much as I like Bebe Neuwirth as Morticia, she’s just a little too ‘warm’ for my liking. If that’s possible, she’s more of Morticia in Frasier than in the clips I’ve seen), but I’m definitely curious about the puppetry in it. A squid, Cousin Itt, a venus fly trap, a giant iguana… sounds like fun!

So the closest I can get is this possible puppet (the iguana?) from a Vanity Fair pic: http://www.theaddamsfamilymusical.com/news.php?vanityfair=1 (sorry about the link, I couldn’t figure out if there was an embed option somewhere) and the clip from DL: