They're creepy and they're kooky, mysterious and spooky.

Snap, snap!

Yet cartoonist Charles Addams' charmingly weird clan is a model family. Give or take the man-eating plants, the torture chamber and their gloomy Gothic mansion.

Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth, starring as Gomez and Morticia in the Broadway-bound musical "The Addams Family," adore the couple's "shared sensibilities," Lane said. They live on the dark side, but they're madly in love.

The maniacally cheery Gomez "is the ideal husband," said stage and screen vet Lane ("The Producers," "The Birdcage"). "He's very passionate about his wife and his family. He adores his family. He's a great husband and a great role model, something to aspire to."

Parent-wise, "he is a little eccentric," Lane agreed. But like any pop, he's shaken when daughter Wednesday, 17, falls in love, the bittersweet premise of the black comedy. "He's very protective," he said.

Co-directed and designed by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, previews of the show begin this weekend at the Ford Center/Oriental Theatre in Chicago. Opening night is Dec. 9 and the world premiere engagement runs through Jan. 10. The show premieres April 8 on Broadway at the Lunt Fontanne Theatre.

Classic characters, gags revisited

"Jersey Boys" team Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice wrote the book, with Andrew Lippa providing lyrics and music. Most of the action takes place within the Addams' eerie, door-and staircase-riddled mansion set in Central Park. The house, almost a character itself, "is a little bit like an Advent calendar, where we can pop out scenes," Crouch said.

The writers drew heavily from Addams' warped cartoons, a fixture in the New Yorker from 1930s through the late 1980s. But the Goth comedy also pays homage to the ABC series (1964-'66) starring Carolyn Jones and John Astin. There are tributes, too, to the sexier Anjelica Huston-Raul Julia comedies, "The Addams Family" (1991) and "Addams Family Values" (1993).

In short, all the classic gags will resurface, including bald Uncle Fester's (Tony nominee Kevin Chamberlin's) light bulb stunt.

As for the Gomez-Morticia chemistry, it's steaming like one of Grandmama's cauldrons. She and Lane suspect the couple enjoyed an ultra-romantic courtship, confirmed Neuwirth ("Cheers," "Frasier"). Cara mia! Sparks flew when the pair met in a mausoleum. But neither TV's "Lilith" nor the serene Morticia are kiss-and-tellers. Their backstory "is an Addams family secret," she purred.

Digging up a 21st century twist

Addams, who cultivated an eerie persona, died at 76 in 1988. Over the years, his estate rejected a dozen offers to revive the stocky Gomez and his willowy wraith of a wife for the stage. Most producers wanted to redo the "Addams Family" sitcom or the movies, spokesman H. Kevin Miserocchi said. He was bewitched when Stuart Oken of Elephant Eye Theatrical proposed a coming-of-age saga, with Wednesday falling for a (gasp) preppie.

"I wanted to hear something fresh and new - absolutely new," Miserocchi said. "Stuart was respectful of the material."

In this case, the specter of a wedding -- and its impact on the extended clan including Grandmama (Jackie Hoffman) and silent butler Lurch (the 6-foot-6 Zachary James) -- humanizes the clan, famously at odds with convention. The family panics. Whatever happened to the little girl who guillotined her dolls? Why is she forsaking funeral black?

To be fair, their conservative in-laws-to-be are horrified. Two-time Tony nominee Terrrence Mann and Carolee Carmello play Mal and Alice Beineke, parents of the smitten Lucas (Wesley Taylor).

When Gomez and Morticia invite the Beinekes to dinner, the clash of cultures makes Lane's "Birdcage" fiasco look like a walk in a pet store. "We're like deer in the headlights," Mann joked. "All hell breaks loose."

Happily, the two families find common ground -- eventually -- as theater-goers begin to rethink the concept of "normal." Over the course of the calamitous evening, the Addamses grow closer while the Beinekes verge on the edge of self-destruction. You don't need Thing to point out the tight-knit family -- and the dysfunctional one.

What's normal? "That's the $64,000 question," Mann said. "That's really what the whole show’s all about. One, it’s about what is normal, two, and love. I think the show’s a real metaphor for some sort of prejudice and bigotry. We see people and automatically attach a stigma to them (if they're different). The show breaks it all down through some humor and some really poignant scenes."

If the message is simple, the challenge of fusing the elements of the cartoons, TV series and movies was suitably tortured. There was a long tussle over the rights to "Thing." The disembodied hand, a childhood friend of Gomez's, was a creation of the TV show. Then Hollywood composer Vic Mizzy, who wrote and sang the show's memorable theme song, was a longtime holdout. Producers finally secured the rights to the song shortly before Mizzy, 93, died last month. Charles Addams would have loved the perverse timing.

"The Addams Family" pre-Broadway engagement, starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth, through Jan. 10, 2010

WHERE: The Ford Center for the Performing Arts/Oriental Theatre, 24 W. Randolph St., Chicago

Tickets: $28-$105

FYI: Broadway in Chicago Ticket Line, (800)775-2000, BroadwayinChicago.com and all Ticketmaster outlets.