The Addams Family

I suspect most people of a certain age, and I include myself in this group, will remember the American sitcom “The Addams Family”; however I doubt many people will know or have seen the musical version of this. If you haven’t then I urge you to go and see it as soon as you can. In fact you should have been at The Lamproom Theatre on the night I was there, it was hilarious and I can tell you for sure all the audience loved it from start to finish.

The story obviously revolves around the Addams family who are a sort of weird family of people who are either dead or undead. The family is headed up by the father, the Latino Gomez played to perfection by David Cooper. David was able to keep his accent up all the way through this piece, not an easy job when everyone around you is speaking with American accents, David was accompanied by his wife Morticia played superbly by Lisa Kendall, the two of them made a perfect match made in er - hell, I suppose you could say.

The rest of the family was made up of Wednesday; the spoilt daughter played by Holly Lees, Pugsley their tear away son played by Liam Hurd, both keeping up their characters all the way through the show. I especially loved the duet from these two, “Pulled” when Pugsley was on the rack being lovingly tortured by his loving sister.

Of course as anyone knows who has seen this show there is of course dear old Uncle Fester played brilliantly by Michael Cooper, he had not only the looks of this part but also the mannerisms and the ability to play it to give the full effect.

The final member of the family is the Grandma played beautifully by Jo Smith, she was a sort of cross between the Grandma from the Beverley Hillbillies and Senna the Soothsayer from Up Pompeii, she had the audience in hysterics from the moment she walked on the stage.

Tom Parry is a tall young man and the part of Lurch calls for this, but you also need the ability to be able to grunt your way through the show as well as hoping the audience will understand you. Well understand him they did which resulted in them loving him all the way through.

A family enters the Addams family house whose son has fallen in love with Wednesday, the daughter. This family was made up of Pete Mayson as Mal, the father, Belinda Lindley as Alice, the mother and Jacob Whitehead as Lucas, their son. Again all these three did an excellent job of portraying their respective characters, with the mother Alice speaking in rhyme the majority of the way through and Lucas showing his love for Wednesday.

The casting of this show was an absolute triumph, everyone being able to show their talents and keep up their respective character throughout, well done to the production team for this.

As I said earlier the family and the extended family are all either dead or undead and the chorus was made up of various characters that to me looked very dead to say the least, something which was, I can assure you was very intentional.

Many congratulations on an excellent show which was superbly produced with a great backing from the band and brilliant choreography.

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