KRCB-FM: Second Row Center

The credits for the Spreckels Theater Company production of The Addams Family, running now through October 28, notes that the musical is “based on characters created by Charles Addams.” It is not a recreation of the beloved 1960’s sitcom. It is not an adaptation of the visually inventive films of the ‘90’s. At the insistence of the Charles Addams Foundation, who retain control of all things Addams, the source material for the musical had to be the cartoons Addams published for fifty years in the New Yorker. The 2010 Broadway musical by Marshall Brickman, Rick Elice and Andrew Lippa had a moderately successful run before becoming a theatrical Halloween season staple. It banks on the goodwill and fond memories of the generations raised with the reruns or the films and then goes in a very different direction. Uncle Fester (Erik Weiss) narrates the show and lets the audience know it’s gonna be a story about love. A teenage Wednesday Addams (Emma LaFever) is worried about bringing her “normal” boyfriend/fiancée