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[0:00] Mo Brady: You're listening to The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. I'm Mo Brady.

[0:13] Mo Brady: It was supposed to be the biggest Broadway show of the season. Two theater titans taking on two of the most familiar roles in popular culture. The combination of wildly successful source material and innovative theater makers were sure to create a theatrical juggernaut. And the public agreed. Advance ticket sales for the show were the largest of any Broadway production to date. And then it opened.

[0:40] Mo Brady: Many jeered the production, but none said it as succinctly as The New York Times' Ben Brantley, when he began his review with the following quote. That original production of The Addams Family defied the odds, and the reviews, to run a respectful 722 performances at Broadway's Lunt-Fontanne Theater. 722 performances of talented people trapped inside a collapsing tomb. Including little old me.

[1:21] Mo Brady: On January 11, 2011, I made my Broadway debut as a replacement ensemble member in The Addams Family. I had booked the job just three weeks earlier, after four quick but thorough auditions, to appear nightly in the show's chorus and cover the small principal role of Wednesday Addams' boyfriend, Lucas Beinecke. Sure, the word around town was that the show wasn't very good, but it was my chance to be on Broadway. And being on Broadway in a meh show was better than not being on Broadway at all.

[2:18] Mo Brady: When I walked into music rehearsals at noon on New Year's Day, I was nervous as hell. I felt capable and grateful, but with a strong sense of disbelief that I would be standing next to Carolee Carmelo, Terrence Mann, and other titans of the American musical theater every night as their peers, or in my case, standing upstage of them in a dim blue light looking undead.

[2:41] Mo Brady: But when I entered the stage door of the Lunt-Fontanne Theater that evening to watch the show for the first time as a soon-to-be company member, I noticed a chill in the air backstage. Not the chill of the New York City winter, or even the chill of the smoke machines pumping the sweet smell of artificial fog from the basement. This was a chill among the company, who seemed trodden down after ten months of performing in what was considered a flop.

[3:11] Mo Brady: Now it's not my place to blame those original company members for their less-than-generous attitude at work. Many of them were lovely, becoming great friends, attending my wedding as treasured guests. I'll never forget the handwritten note Carolee Carmelo gave me on my opening night on her own letterhead and thinking, Lucille Frank personally wrote me a letter. But for the many tropes of theater companies being a family, the company of The Addams Family did not feel like one to me.

[3:41] Mo Brady: Ah, the intoxicating smell of the graveyard. Once a year when the last leaf of autumn falls... Despite that notable chill, I can honestly say that I enjoyed my time as a member of La Familia, as we were called backstage. For an ensemble-loving actor like me, this felt like a perfect production to be a part of. There were only ten of us in the onstage ensemble, a rather concise crew as far as musicals go. Each of us had a distinct personality with a highly individualized costume. There was a World War I soldier, a caveman, pilgrim, gambler, bride, flight attendant, saloon girl, flapper, and... a Native American played by a Latinx actor. I can't even begin to justify this.

[4:26] Mo Brady: I played a 16th century Spanish conquistador, adorned with a plumed helmet, breastplate, white tights, and Shakespearean pumpkin pants, as we called them. Every night felt like an opportunity to create a specific character that went on a journey. My unsung and necessarily unknown character arc was the conquistador was in love with Wednesday Addams, and spent the course of the proceedings trying to get between her and her boyfriend Lucas until he proved that he was truly crazier than her. It was a story arc mostly told through knowing looks and mute reactions, but it gave me something to play each night.

[5:02] Mo Brady: For a singer who moved well like me, my track in The Addams Family was an enjoyable one. I liked getting to make my entrance out of the basement, through the fog, and out of the Addams Family crypt door. I liked getting to sing the Broadway pop harmonies of Andrew Lippa, whose score of The Wild Party I fell in love with in college. I liked the specificity of Sergio Trujillo's choreography, which I still think was one of the most unsung parts of that show. We ensemble members also did a significant amount of puppetry in that production, so I got to flex my muscles learned in theater-for-young-audience contracts playing Squid's Tentacles or Uncle Fester's Left Leg.

[5:43] Mo Brady: Replacing in the ensemble is not the experience one might imagine when they think of being on Broadway, most notably for the lack of proximity to the creative process. The show is already up and running, and a replacement's job is to replace a puzzle piece as seamlessly and unremarkably as possible. Still, I always felt affection by the writers, Lippa as well as book writers Rick Ellis and Marshall Brickman. On the very rare occasions they were in the building to put in a new lead. That being said, I'm almost positive that director Jerry Zaks did not know who I was or what I played when he passed me by the call board, but he was kind enough to give me a job, and for that I was grateful.

[6:33] Mo Brady: During the full calendar year I was a member of the cast, the vibe shifted dramatically. When the lovely Roger Reiss joined the cast to take over the role of Gomez, there was an immediate change of energy in the building. That shift continued as more and more new people came into the cast bringing gratitude into the building with them. By the time the show closed on New Year's Eve, the Lunt-Fontanne had become a fun place to work. We had Secret Santa sing-alongs and many, many backstage parody lyrics. Against the odds, we had actually become a family.

[7:09] Mo Brady: A few months before that closing date, the show's first national tour was cast, rehearsed, and went out on the road. We heard from our loving stage managers and associate creative team members that the writers were reworking parts of the show for this new mounting, things that they hadn't had time to fix in the show's trying sprint towards opening on Broadway or that they had conceived of after the fact. In the press, the creators promised potential ticket buyers that they had improved the show, making it better than the one they had opened on the main stem. Those statements may have been true, but nevertheless felt like a blow to those of us still performing the lesser version of their show each night.

[7:57] Mo Brady: In the years that followed The Addams Family, I never really thought about what those changes might be. As the lines and harmonies I had once memorized began evaporating from my memory over months and years, much of the show I performed more than 350 times has been lost. Friends and family would reach out when they saw the show on tour or a billboard for a production in Italy or Australia, but I never really thought about how those productions were different from our Broadway mounting. And then, in early 2016, I saw an article on Playbill about the most performed high school musicals in America. The Educational Theatre Association had released their annual survey of the most produced musicals in high schools across the country in the 2014-2015 school year. And surprisingly, at least to me, The Addams Family was the most popular high school musical in the country.

[8:51] Mo Brady: Not only that, the show kept that spot for the following school year, and the next, and the next. In four of the last five school years, The Addams Family was the most popular high school musical to be produced in the United States. The one year it didn't top the chart, it was second to Disney's Beauty and the Beast, most likely because of the live-action remake that had come out a year prior.

[9:18] Mo Brady: How was this possible? I thought high schools performed musical theater canon, Broadway mega-hits like Oklahoma or Les Miserables. How did our little unloved musical become so popular? Sure, we're only talking about high schools, but it means something that for half a decade, more future theater-makers and theater-lovers have learned the lyrics to "When You're An Addams" than any other song in the musical theater canon.

[9:45] Mo Brady: So that's what this miniseries is all about, finding out how the Broadway flop Addams Family became America's favorite musical. What changes were made to the show? How did perspective shift? And did the ensemble have anything to do with that transformation? Over the next few weeks, I'm reaching out to the creators of The Addams Family to learn how.

[10:25] Mo Brady: The Ensemblist was produced today by Jackson Klein and me, Mo Brady. Please rate and review The Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or at bpn.fm, the home of Broadway Podcast Network.

[10:39] Mo Brady: Our Patreon members have on-demand access to our archive, including full conversations with our guests and early access to episodes. You can support us for between $5 and $20 a month at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist.

[10:53] Mo Brady: Thanks for listening. Until next time.