The Addams Family

In a stroke of luck and kind friendship, I found myself treated to dinner and the theater tonight by bjcooper and her partner TC. We had a light but delicious dinner at Sazerac, to which I really want to return to sample more of their excellent (and remarkably affordable for downtown) menu. The bacon-wrapped dates were wonderful and the chicken liver pate was delicious--that was just a bit of everything we had.

At Seattle's historic treasure, The 5th Avenue Theater, we saw the road production of The Addams Family, which was very good--not great, but very good--and a lot of fun. Soon after the show began, I realized that it was following the model of "La Cage aux Folles"--child of an unusual family wants to marry the child of a usual family; this is what happens when the two families meet. While the twists and turns are different, the structure is the same. It's not deep but it works. We thought the actor playing Gomez was terrific (but then it's a great part and a great character--he had a lot to work with). I thought that the actress playing Morticia was rather lackluster. She seemed to flatfoot most of her performance; she was missing a certain je ne sais quoi, a certain snap--she didn't have much in the way of stage presence and it told in the performance. For my money, the performances really worth watching were the previously mentioned Gomez, the actor playing Uncle Fester for his clear relish in the role, and for his clever, momentary bits of brilliance, the actor playing Lurch with his sonorous, gorgeous basso voice.

And of course, the company was excellent. I quite enjoyed myself.