DAN'S PAPERS, April 23, 2010 Page 30 www.danshamptons.com
Addams
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a strait-jacket or a suit of armor. Sure, you make a flashy (if obvious) first impression. But then you’re stuck in the darn thing for the rest of the night, and it’s really, really uncomfortable. Why you can barely move, and a strangled voice inside you keeps gasping ‘H-e-e-lp! Get me out of here!” “A dull meal,” wrote John Lahr of The New Yorker magazine. “If ‘The Addams Family’ bears witness to anything, it’s to a peculiar habit of most Broadway producers: give them a mile and they’ll take an inch.” “Sadly, neither Lane nor his similarly dependable co-star Bebe Neuwirth—a dry, stunning Morticia in a low-cut gown and long black wig— is given much to work with here.” wrote Elsa Gardner of USA Today. And here’s one more. “The hackneyed plot might have been serviceable if there enough
funny jokes in the mix,” wrote Frank Scheck of the Hollywood Reporter. On Saturday afternoon, my wife and I were waiting for the Hampton Jitney between Third and Lexington at 86th Street, and in the gutter, crumpled up, was the front page of a morning newspaper called NY Metro. A headline above the masthead read “Addams Family The Worst.” “Even the trash in the street is slamming this production,” I said. “Do we have to go?” “Yes,” she said. “On the other hand, maybe the show will close by then. If it does that, I’ll get my money back.” “You sure?” “Maybe.” Well, we can always walk out, I suppose. Meanwhile, regardless of whether the show remains open, the home of Tee and Charles
Addams in Sagaponack, now a museum, will be open to the public for the first time on the day we are seeing the Broadway show. This will have happened by the time you read this. The home, lovingly restored as the real Addams Family lived in it in the 1970s and 1980s, is filled with Addams memorabilia including a pet cemetery outside where their dogs are buried, a stuffed mongoose, stuffed birds in cages, many drawings by Addams and a nude painting of Wednesday in nothing but stockings and boots in one of the bathrooms. The house is available for tours from 9 to 5 between April 15 and June 15, and then again from September 15 to November 15, with tours given by H. Kevin Miserocchi and Robert Klosowicz, who are the curators of what is now known as the Tee & Charles Addams Foundation. To learn more, go to addamsfoundation.org.
LIPA/Lizard
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have put a halt to the project. The demand to cease and desist is in a letter written on April 13 to LIPA’s Senior Vice President of Operations Michael D. Hervey by Kevin Kispert, a NYSDEC Project Manager. Copies of the letter were sent to National Grid, to the DEC Review Team, to some consultants at a firm called AKRF that did the inspection and to Monique Brechter, LIPA’s Director of Environmental Affairs. It reads like a shot across the bow, similar in tone to letters fired off to cease and desist the annual fireworks display at Main Beach on July 4 in East Hampton, because of endangered piping plover birds nesting. Those letters have gone out for each of the last six years and there have been no July 4 fireworks for six years. “The occurrence of Eastern Tiger Salamader (Ambystoma tigrinum) on or adjacent to the proposed project has been documented,” the letter reads. The salamanders live in a wetland approximately 340 feet from the proposed substation. The entire area that is to be cleared for the new LIPA project consists of quality non-breeding habitat (mature upland) for this species. The site could also have individual salamanders inhabiting the immediate area during construction, which could result in the death of these subterranean animals. All of these actions would result in a ‘take’ (decimation) of a listed species. “Article 11 and case law support the Department’s authority to exercise its permit jurisdiction where a ‘take’ will occur, even AFTER the SEQRA review has been completed. “This Department is currently holding the License to Collect and Possess application pending until this matter is finalized.” In other words, not one mini volt of electricity is to pass through those underground wires until they find another location for the substation. Sag Harbor, get out your candles and kerosene lanterns. The endangered Eastern Tiger Salamander strikes again.