If the Kennedys could be said to be American royalty, then the famed Addams family would surely be satirical pretenders to their antithesis.
Gothic, seemingly immortal and nothing if not weird, this wacky clan with a taste for the creatively macabre first appeared in a series of around 150 single-panel cartoons by New Jersey resident Charles Addams, many of which were published in The New Yorker magazine between 1938 and their creator's death 50 years later.
Now, after numerous incarnations since then on the small screen, the silver screen (in a smash-hit 1991 Hollywood film starring Angelica Huston) and on Broadway — where their spooky mansion was relocated from a nonspecific swamp beside a cemetery to Central Park in New York — the rollcall of Morticia, Gomez, Uncle Fester, Wednesday, Thing, Grandmama and the rest is now casting its uniquely merry spell on audiences venturing to enjoy "The Addams Family" musical playing at the Aoyama Theatre in Tokyo.