It says something about the unease at large that the musical adaptation of “The Addams Family” feels like a return to normalcy.
Morticia, Gomez, Grandma, Uncle Fester, Wednesday and other members of America’s most morbid bloodline provide charmingly escapist entertainment at the Ordway Center, where the show that kicks off the venue’s Broadway season runs through Sunday.
The fact that “Addams Family” is so charming comes is evidence of the skill of its creative team but also of the facility updates at the Ordway. Because of new sound and lighting systems, the show sounds and looks exquisite. Randel Wright’s graveyard scenography, where Uncle Fester gets to dance with the moon, is transporting. Ditto about Tristan Raines’ funereal black-and-white costumes, which are lit creatively by video designer Charles Ford.
The technical upgrades also help “Addams Family” feel more intimate and immediate, even though what we’re watching is the height of ghastliness.
Those roles are played, respectively, by Argentine opera singer Rodrigo Aragón and Renee Kathleen Koher at the Ordway. True, they don’t have the celebrity wattage as their big-named predecessors, but both performers have strong craft and a winning chemistry. Aragon, especially, has inviting charisma and talent, and he uses his gifts well.
The “Addams Family” plot is fairly humdrum. The arrow-shooting Wednesday (Melody Munitz) and Lucas Beineke (David Eldridge) are smitten with each other. Their new love raises the expected tensions between them and their families and, also, unfavorably backlights their elders’ marriages. Things have gone stale between Gomez and Morticia and Lucas’ parents, Alice (Sarah Mackenzie Baron) and Mal (Tucker Boyes).
Staged and choreographed with a playful cirque sensibility by Antoinette DiPietropolo, “Addams Family” has an overlong first act. That’s partly because it’s loaded with songs that are not particularly memorable, and partly because it takes its time setting up the story.
The second act is zippier, and the principals deliver with flair. Koher slays on “Just Around the Corner,” projecting Morticia’s desire and edge in song and menacing dance. Aragon’s highlights include “Trapped,” in the first act and he and Koher are delightful on “Live Before We Die/Tando de Amor.”
The three couples — the parents and their betrothed offspring — are antic on “Crazier Than You” with Baron standing out for her over-the-top, Vicki Lawrence-esque Alice.
As Grandma, former Cirque du Soleil lead clown Shereen Hickman expertly delivers a stream of well-timed, tongue-in-cheek bawdiness. She’s almost like a variety TV act as she works through a series of props and cracks jokes about leaky adult diapers.
That line of comedy is unexpected. But it makes the members of “Addams Family” seem like everyday people, and the show itself, a source not just of ribald laughs but also of surprising joy.
