Manchester Theatre News & Reviews

REVIEW - The Addams Family successfully walks the line between the ghoulish and good old fashioned family fun

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On Tuesday, we were invited to Lowry, Salford to see The Addams Family. Read what our reviewer Leanne Parker had to say about this fun, family production...

Arguably the most famous spooky, kooky family of our times, the quintessential gothic aesthetic of The Addams Family has been given an exciting Broadway style make-over and arrived at The Lowry on this delightfully gothic UK Tour.

This spook-tacular musical comedy comes from Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice (writers of the multi award-winning hit musical Jersey Boys), with original music and lyrics by Tony Award-nominated Andrew Lippa (Unbreakable, The Little Princess, I am Harvey Milk). After *decades* of loving all versions of this wonderfully weird family, from the black and white 1960’s series all the way through to the recent smash hit Netflix spin-off ‘Wednesday’, I was super excited to see how these iconic, eccentric, darkly comedic characters would be brought to life on the stage. After all, they are a veritable feast of dramatic possibility and personality and the fact that this is a stellar cast of some of industries finest seemed even more promising.

The evening opens with the familiar theme music and instantly, fingers start clicking along with Thing and the atmosphere is set. We are thrust into the middle of the plotline so to speak. The family are visiting the graveyard for the annual gathering of all family members (living, dead, and undecided). At the end, Uncle Fester prevents the ancestors (played by a fabulously fiendish ensemble cast) from returning to the crypt and explains that he needs to enlist their help. It emerges that Wednesday (played this evening by understudy Maria Garrett – Mrs Doubtfire, Mary Poppins, 42^nd Street) has fallen for super ‘normal’, super ‘ordinary’ Lucas (Jacob Fowler – Heathers, Dreamcoats and Petticoats, Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella). She is so in love that she is contemplating marriage but is aware that their two families haven’t yet met and must do so before the marriage can go ahead. Very reluctantly, she has arranged for Lucas’ parents – the devoted mother, calm and reserved (or at least, so you think!) Alice (Kara Lane - Come Fall in Love – The DDLJ Musical, The Sound of Music) and rather uptight, cynical Mal (Dale Rapley – Kyoto, As You Like It, Singin’ in the Rain, Gypsy), to come to the Addams’ home for “one normal night”. But of course, the Addams family is no ordinary family, and from the moment a towering Luch (played to absolute perfection by Dickon Gough) appears before them in the imposing gothic Addams Family mansion, you just know that the evening will be anything *but* ordinary! Events are not helped by the fact that Wednesday has confided her love and plans for marriage to her father, Gomez, but bound him to a promise that he will not reveal her secret until she has the chance to do so herself, at the dinner. This creates a subplot involving Morticia which runs alongside the main love story at the heart of the evening.

All the familiar family members you’d expect are accounted for in this stage adaptation, as well as the new Beineke family. Gomez (Ricardo Afonso – Jesus Christ Superstar, Zorro the Musical, Thriller Live, We Will Rock You) and Morticia (Alexandra Burke – The Bodyguard, Sister Act, Chicago) are played with reassuring familiarity – the dark, passionate rapture in one another that they were always known for is retained. They are living with Gomez’s delightfully eccentric brother Fester (Clive Rowe - The Baker’s Wife, Sister Act, The Prince of Egypt, Sweet Charity), son Pugsley (Nicholas McLean - Kinky Boots, Annie Get Your Gun, Wicked) who remains the constant source of Wednesday’s torture attempts, butler Lurch (Dickon Gough - Fiddler on the Roof, Aspects of Love, As You Like It) and Grandma (Lesley Joseph - Sister Act, Young Frankenstein, Annie the Musical, Calendar Girls the Musical) who smokes weed in the attic and no-one actually knows whose mother she is! The cast as a whole, deliver fantastically throughout the evening, including the entire undead ensemble who bring energy and spectacle to the ghoulishly good choreography by Alistair David (White Christmas, Ghost the Musical, The Producers, Fiddler on the Roof, Beauty and the Beast, Oklahoma!).

While the wider cast is excellent, there are definitely a few stand out performances. Afonso’s Gomez is utter perfection, bringing to life the suave, optimistic, old-fashioned romance and deep, passionate love for Morticia that characterises him to the core. The tango scene with Morticia is absolute fire, with Burke’s dancing class and talent very much on show and adding to the ethereal electricity between them. Afonso wears the flamboyance of the character exceedingly well and I would argue, delivers by far the most memorable and engaging performance of the evening. His portrayal of the devoted father, and the emotions that surely come with seeing your child growing up were very touching and the quieter scenes between father and daughter definitely tugged at my own heart as he sang about the juxtaposition of feelings that comes with being both glad and sad at watching your child’s years slip away into the adult they are becoming. Maria Garrett’s Wednesday is also worthy of mention, especially given that she is the cover/understudy. She delivers some very powerful vocal performances through the evening, while giving the sarky, snarky deadpan one-liners we know and love of Wednesday Addams, all nicely wrapped in twisted teenage sassiness. She also manages to switch between the familiar Wednesday and the shinier, happier, loved up version and we see her struggle to adapt to the changes.

The pairing of Garrett and Fowler as Wednesday and Lucas, despite their *very* clear differences, somehow just works on stage. Their young love chemistry is felt, their harmonising works, and they just feel like a couple. Uncle Lurch (Rowe) acts as a narrator for the evening. He does a fantastic job of capturing the lovable, childish, incorrigible nature of this character with a twinkle in his eye and a mischievous grin always on hand. He delivers some fantastic humour with naturally comedic timing and the audience adore him. Burke’s Morticia is well delivered with all the disinterest, aloofness, and deadpan style that the role demands. Some of her one-liners are fabulously dry, and there’s at least one that I am now making it my mission to use in the future about delving into her river of womanly compassion and bathing Gomez in her forgiveness, which sounds weird when I write this, but in the moment she said it, landed with a level of sassiness that should be illegal. Her on stage relationship with Afonso is just right and the two portray the deep devotion of the fictional couple with ease. Despite their darkness, they really are the epitome of romantic love, and I’d go so far as to say #CoupleGoals (but then I’ve always wanted to experience a love like theirs – though perhaps with a little less torture and murderous intent to be fair).

There’s a lot to like about this production. It’s fun, theatrical and energetic. The cast is strong, talented and engaging. The staging and set design by Diego Pitarch (White Christmas, Night of the Living Dead Live) is spot-on, capturing with perfect aesthetics the creepy, hauntingly gothic space which the Addams Family inhabit, with that reassuringly familiar eerie feel. This is complemented very well by Ben Cracknell’s (Grease, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Young Frankenstein, Annie) melancholic and atmospheric lighting design. Being so familiar with earlier incarnations of this splendidly and outrageously kooky, creepy, gothic family, and their unique brand of dark comedy, this version felt like it did a stellar job of aiming to recreate that for us this evening. The production focuses on the core Wednesday/Lucas romance plot and the dysfunctional Gomez/Morticia romance and while those are worthy plotlines, it was a bit disappointing that some of the other fiendishly fantastic characters of this beloved gothic group just didn’t get the centre stage time they deserved. For me, that felt like a real shame. I did, however, appreciate and enjoy the nods to comedic ridiculousness associated with the older, classic Addams Family, that this production has captured, and this cast deliver well. A dry, dark flavour of slapstick is evident throughout parts of the evening. Notable scenes must include Pugsley (McLean), concerned he will lose his beloved sister to this marriage, plotting to break up the couple. To achieve this, he steals a serum from Grandma (played with humour and the kind of attitude that you only associate with wicked old ladies unshackled by social currency or guile by Lesley Joseph who is vastly underutilised in this script). In a comedic twist of events, the potion ends up being consumed by Alice, who then declares the truth about her loveless marriage to Mal, setting in motion a hilarious at times, but also quite emotional set of events. Uncle Festers declaration of his love for the moon is another great scene where the sublime meets the ridiculous.

Overall, this production offers the audience a fiendishly fun-filled evening, with some laugh-out-loud moments, the odd risqué one liner, some great, original musical offerings, and all the absurd gothic hilarity you’d expect from an evening with The Addams Family brought to life in full gothic, glory onstage. It successfully walks the line between the ghoulish and good old fashioned family fun.

WE SCORE THE ADDAMS FAMILY...