Helen Willis / Rezensionen

What is normal? Cartoonist Charles Addams invented “ Addams Family ” in 1938, which survived as a cartoon for 50 years. In the 1960s, this weird gothic story was then marketed as a television series, from 1991 as a successful live-action film, and now also as an animated film. The story about Gomez, his wife Mortica and their two children, who live with their ancestors in the middle of New York's Central Park in a large estate, was adapted by Andrew Lippa into the book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice in 2010 as a Broadway musical comedy produced. Since 2014, this version has also been performing on German stages. And now at the Theater Ulm . (And soon the material will also be made into a Netflix film.) Actually, this musical version tells of a completely normal situation: Wednesday, the daughter of Gomez and Mortica, is in love with Lucas, a young man from a perfectly normal middle-class family. Both want to get married. Now both parents should get to know each other. One reacts correspondingly hectic and nervous (who does not know such a situation as a parent of children who want to marry?). You want to appear advantageous, stage yourself, don't want to let go of the children. It's no different in the Addams Family. The fact that this family appears again and again with their ancestors doesn't change much: They are there, but the actual competence to act lies with Wednesday, who unfortunately remains strangely reserved with Alexandra Ostapenko in the Ulm performance.

And because the wonderful Maria Rosendorfsky has long had dramatic qualities with her lyrical soprano, this Susanna can dress up as a countess for the intrigue in a convincing way that is rare: her last aria is extremely sensitive, almost nobility