The Addams Family have been one of the most famous families for almost eighty years. Starting off as a regular cartoon in The New Yorker in 1938 and then in various incarnations since. From the small screen, cameos in Scooby Do, as well as two hugely popular films. Since 2010 they have been entertaining us on stage, and this week I went to see if they stayed true to their morbidly fun selves.
The plot to The Addams Family: The Musical Comedy is based around Wednesday (Carrie Hope Fletcher) recently finding love in nice, ‘normal’ (what is normal? Normal to the spider is catastrophe for the fly), boy Lucas Beineke (Oliver Ormson), and arranging for his mother and father to meet hers at their garishly gothic abode. All very straightforward, you may think, but no. For Wednesday has a secret; she is to marry Lucas. Well what’s the problem with that, I hear you ask. Her mother, I tell you. But why? I’m not really sure. This part didn’t really fit my mental image of how they functioned as a family unit.
Wednesday asks her father, Gomez (Cameron Blakely) to keep it a secret from her until after dinner because she thinks she’ll ruin it, and show her up. Gomez is torn between not keeping secrets from his wife, and not hurting his daughter. So he promises to keep the secret, but will he?
So let’s examine the Family in a bit more detail. Fletcher was delightful to watch, a truly amazing performer, but I wasn’t feeling Wednesday. She wasn’t Addams enough; I don’t blame this on Fletcher, I believe it was down to the way the character was written. She seemed more like an American sitcom feisty teen type character. There was a song (featuring a hilariously misfortunate bird) explaining how she felt she was changing since she’d fallen in love, but it didn’t really justify the character for me. She was missing a certain amount of macabre. Wednesday was still a brilliant character, and I’m not trying to say the show was any worse because of it, I just wanted to share my thoughts.
I wasn’t sold on Gomez at first, either. He didn’t seem as dashing as I would have expected, and I don’t remember him ever having a Spanish accent. It wasn’t long before I warmed to him, though. Blakely really made this part his own with his strong vocals, equally strong dancing, and genius comic timing. His wife, Morticia (played by a childhood crush of mine, Samantha Womack), to me, was not far from spot on. She had Morticia’s figure, accentuated by the trademark long black dress, and her sexy sultriness. As I said before, though, I wasn’t convinced by her apparent disapproval of Wednesdays engagement to Lucas. It is something I would have expected to her fully support her daughter in, as a character. Other than the disagreement over this with Gomez, their onstage relationship as husband as wife was just as passionate as expected. We get treated to their infamous Tango.
Then we have Pugsley (Grant McIntyre) who didn’t quite seem dark enough for me. Brilliantly played by McIntyre, who also has a great singing voice, but the fact that he seemed to be jealous that he was losing his sister to Lucas didn’t seem to fit. It was too much emotion. Uncle Fester (the legend that is Les Dennis) partly narrated the story, and I can’t fault his character at all. Much the same with Grandma (Valda Aviks), and of course, Lurch (Dickon Gough). Lurch, literally lurching across the stage, had us in stictches. It only really became obvious why Gough was cast as this part at the end, when the opera trained singer showed us what his voice was really capable of.
We are treated to Disney-esque songs throughout, and they were great. None that I would say would necessarily stick in your head, but toe tappingly, jazz handing-ly, entertaining all the same, with some fantastic choreography from the offset. It is very funny, too. Everybody plays their part in adding to this, notably Mrs Beineke (Charlotte Page) putting up with her husband’s (Dale Rapley) ultra straight laced ways by speaking in rhyme….all the time.
The set is beautifully crafted, very much resembling the Addams residence, with all the creaks in all the right places.
In spite of everything I said about only three out of seven members of the Family being what I expected, it doesn’t take away from the show, it makes it the brilliant performance it was. Expect spells and potions, an entourage of ghosts of family members past, torture devices, oh, and of course, the disembodied Thing.
Review by John Banks
Catch The Adams Family today if you can at Theatre Royal at either 2:30 or 7:30, get you tickets by contacting the box office 0115 989 5555.
