The Addams Family is a musical with music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa and a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. The show is based upon The Addams Family characters created by Charles Addams in his single-panel gag cartoons, which depict a ghoulish American family with an affinity for all things macabre. While numerous film and television adaptations of Addams' cartoons exist, the stage show draws only marginally from these depictions of the characters. After a tryout in Chicago, the show opened on Broadway in April 2010, with a National Tour scheduled to begin in September 2011. The original cast features Nathan Lane as Gomez and Bebe Neuwirth as Morticia. Lane and Neuwirth have reportedly signed on until March 2011. An original Broadway cast recording featuring the show's musical numbers, was released on June 8, 2010.