Some of America’s favourite oddities are bringing their peculiar brand of graveyard humour to town, and a monstrously good time is promised as the Armidale School puts on The Addams Family Musical this week.
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"It’s a night of pure enjoyment and entertainment,” director Colette Brus said. “There’s something in this for everyone, be it familiar characters, or the idea that being different is something to be celebrated. There are fantastic songs; we have a wonderfully talented cast; and it’s hilarious.”
The brainchild of American cartoonist Charles Addams, the family appeared in the New Yorker from the late 1930s. They inspired a clever TV sitcom in the ‘60s; two Hollywood blockbuster films in the ‘90s starring Anjelica Huston, Raúl Juliá, and Christopher Lloyd; cartoons; and video games.
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The Addams are a mad cross between Edgar Allan Poe and the Marx Brothers – or, as Vic Mizzy’s famous lyrics have it, “They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky...” The clan inhabit a haunted Gothic mansion, full of cobwebs, trapdoors, homicidal plants, and a cemetery out the back.
Gomez (Michael Harrell), the wealthy head of the family, has a fondness for the rack and a penchant for blowing up model railway trains. His elegant, witch-like wife Morticia (Kira Dooner) beheads flowers, and grows deadly nightshade and henbane. Daughter Wednesday (Ellen Coote) packs a crossbow and guillotines her dolls, while son Pugsley (Kade Stanley) plays with his pet octopus in the basement.
Then there are bald, whey-faced, shambling Uncle Fester (Will Almond); Grandmama Addams (Holly Billinghurst), a knife-throwing hag; towering, cavern-voiced butler Lurch (George Lane); and family pet Thing, a disembodied hand.
The musical, which opened on the Great White Way in 2010, shows the Addams family in a different light. Wednesday has hit her late teens, and fallen in love – with Lucas (Keanu Rhoades), an all-American boy from Ohio. She tells her father, but asks him not to tell her mother. Chaos ensues.
The plot plays the old trick of bringing members of the American establishment – teachers, psychiatrists, businessmen, and strait-laced neighbours – up against the Addams’ warm-hearted but decidedly alternative take on family values, where the children are encouraged to play with battle-axes, but Grimm’s Fairy Tales is considered too violent.
“The Addams Family is a story about two different families,” director Colette Brus said, “and how the universal theme of love brings them together.”
Putting the musical on has been a long process. Rehearsals started in October, and, over that time, Ms Brus said, she’s seen the cast grow and mature.
Some – like Michael Harrell, Kira Dooner, and Ellen Coote, as Addams old and young – are experienced troupers. Others are making their theatrical debuts.
Will Forsyth, as Beineke Senior, is making his transition from backstage to the limelight, and had to master an American accent, while George Lane has moved from the chorus to one of the leads.
“Some students who've never even been in a show before have just blossomed into talented young performers, and shown skills they didn't even know they had to start with,” Ms Brus said. “I've no doubt there're some budding stars in this cast.”
There are, she promises, some cracking numbers, some big laughs, and some incredibly talented students. So get a witch's shawl on, a broomstick you can crawl on, and pay a call on the Addams Family.
The Addams Family Musical runs at the Armidale School Hoskins Centre, from Thursday to Saturday at 7pm, with a matinee on Saturday at 2pm. Email hoskins@as.edu.au; phone (02) 6776 5878; or book online through Trybooking (https://www.trybooking.com/book/event?eid=351041&).