The Addams Family

The original Addams family were cartoon characters created by Charles Addams in 1938. The characters soon featured in films and TV programmes but the musical is more recent – the first performance was off Broadway in March 2010 and ran on Broadway for some 722 performances before closing in December 2011.

The opening number showed we were in for a fun evening as it introduced us to the Addams family alive, dead and uncertain, and was a super opening to the show.

The energetic “undead” family ancestors (Neve Armstrong, Chas Barclay, Tim Brown, BeckyGilbert, Hannah Grainger, Holly Lennie, Shelley Martin and Jessica Wildman) formed the chorus and they gave strong support to the principals. Every cast member was committed to theircharacterisation of these iconic roles.

Richard Dodd headed up the family as Gomez, and his performance was superb, never faltering musically or performance wise. As Morticia, Samantha Gallop looked perfect with a great singing voice being an added bonus. Her sombre expression never lapsed, there was an excellent rapport between her and Richard, and their musical numbers were well executed.

Nadia Saif was excellent as Wednesday, the daughter who was now grown up and fallen in love with a boy from a “normal” family, Lucas Beineke, also well portrayed by Sam Waters. The electric chair loving Pugsley, played by Alfie Peckham, revelled in the antics of his character, in particular the torture inflicted by his sister, and the duet “Pulled”, with Wednesday, was particularly good and highly amusing.

The Addams family line-up was completed by Tim Meikle who was Uncle Fester personified. He too had a great singing voice as well as being able to portray the moon crazed character, and Maureen Hutter played grandma with grotesque delight.

The principal line-up was completed with the parents of Lucas, Mal & Alice, played by Neil Griffin and Claire Mead respectively. Both gave strong performances, and Claire gave a first-rate rendition of “Waiting” to close Act 1.

As the faithful servant Lurch, Dominic Bright grunted and groaned his way through with gusto and the family ‘pet’ Thing (Tayler Quarrie) and Cousin It (Bryannie Quarrie) added extra weirdness to an already weird household.

Director and Choreographer Emily Starr had WTG pulling out all the stops with this production. Given the confines of stage and wing space she kept scenery to a minimum choosing to use an excellent backcloth for the exterior graveyard scenes and various coloured travellers for others and using, in some cases very large, props necessary to create the right stage picture.

The singing and choreography were extremely good and well executed. The make-up well designed and very effective.

All this plus swift scene changes, excellent sound and lighting together with a first class ten piece orchestra under the baton of musical director Maria McElroy combined to enhance the high quality of the production.

“Full Disclosure”? This was a super evening’s entertainment.

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