The Addams Family

Wednesday Addams, all grown up but still drawn to the macabre, has fallen for a cheerful young man named Lucas Beineke and invited his parents to dinner at the family's crumbling mansion. She asks her father Gomez, who has never kept a secret from his wife Morticia, to hide the engagement from her for one night, a request that tears at everything he believes about honesty in his marriage. Meanwhile Uncle Fester, Grandma, the towering butler Lurch, and a houseful of ancestors summoned from the family crypt prepare for an evening in which the Addamses' gleeful embrace of gloom collides head on with the Beinekes' buttoned-up normalcy.

Music and lyrics are by Andrew Lippa, drawing on the ghoulish family created by cartoonist Charles Addams for The New Yorker. The musical opened on Broadway in 2010 and, thanks to characters familiar from decades of television and film, has become one of the most frequently produced shows in community and school theater.

The score is a bright, theatrical pop sound built for a family of eccentrics who are perfectly happy being strange. The evening opens with the ancestors rising from their graves for "When You're an Addams," setting the tone before Wednesday's aching "Pulled" reveals how torn she feels between two worlds. The dinner itself unravels in the frantic "One Normal Night," while Gomez wrestles with his promise in the tender "Happy/Sad." Listen for how Lurch, who barely speaks, gets his own comic moment, and for the warmth underneath all the graveyard jokes. It suits families looking for a funny, slightly spooky night out, especially around Halloween.