Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre’s The Addams Family
“America has loved the Addams Family for 80 years, and now we have a rerun marathon of your favorite creepy and kooky characters in the flesh and blood. They’re all back (minus Cousin Itt) in a surprisingly sanguine musical that celebrates family values through the generations. Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre’s production will keep you smiling from the moment Thing cues the overture until the inspirational finale, Move Toward the Darkness.
Gomez (Vince Musgrave) and Morticia (Alicia Sweeney) are a matched couple. He a devoted family man and she a macabre lovely, they share a passion for life and death. Gomez revels in his whacky Spanish ancestry in the opening tango, When You’re an Addams, while Morticia celebrates their complete candor in her cha-cha, Secrets. But when daughter Wednesday (Lucy Bobbin) confides a secret love affair to her father, Gomez has two problems: Morticia’s possible reaction and his sorrow that, as he sings, Wednesday’s Growing Up. Love is also a problem for little brother Pugsley (Drew Sharpe/Matthew Beagan) with whom Wednesday shares a sadomasochistic sibling rivalry. Cue the waltz What If She Never Tortures Me Anymore?
Wednesday’s boyfriend, Lukas Beineke (Daniel Starnes), is a conservative Midwestern tourist she met while crossbow hunting on the Addams property in Central Park. A disastrous dinner with his parents, Mal (Jim Reiter) and Alice (Andrea Ostrowski Wildason), ensues, despite Wednesday’s pleas for One Normal Night. When Mrs. Beineke accidentally imbibes one of Grandma’s (Ginny White) herbal truth serums while playing Full Disclosure, a game “loosely based on the Inquisition,” she lambastes her control-freak husband in the grave Lament. Uncle Fester (Eric Meadows) comes to the rescue by summoning the dead Addams ancestors to keep the Beinekes hostage until all can resolve happily ever after. For despite his upbringing, the suitor who aspires to be a coroner is an Addams at heart.
This cast shines brighter than a blue moon. Musgrave draws on his Cuban heritage to create the quintessential Spaniard with a versatile voice of gold: tortured in the tango, Not Today, urgent in the habanera, Trapped, introspective in Happy Sad and haunting in Morticia (“the screams she saves for you, the hell she puts you through!”).
Sweeny, every curvaceous inch Morticia with the mincing step and withering deadpan, is most compelling in her cheery softshoe, Death Is Just Around the Corner. As Wednesday, Bobbin is as cold as ice and hot as flames with a voice and moves to wake the dead in her pulsing solo, Pulled. As her suitor, Starnes is charming and lovable in his salsa-infused rock anthem, Crazier Than You. Sharpe is a vulnerable, hollow-eyed Pugsley. As Uncle Fester, Meadows is sweet strumming a ukulele and crooning love songs to the moon. Reiter is too convincing as the unfeeling square, while Wildason is maddening with her Pollyanna-style rhyming couplets. And Steve Streetman is uncanny as the Frankensteinean butler Lurch. As for the chorus, they are the most spirited the company has ever gathered.
With a dilapidated Victorian set complete with spider-patterned wallpaper, a torture chamber and sound effects featuring ghostly moans and the thumping of Poe’s Tell Tale Heart, you’ll feel right at home. Spotlights broadcast the silhouette of the creepy tree in the yard with a full moon projected onto the roof of a neighboring building, where Fester serenades from the parapet. The music features clever lyrics reminiscent of Weird Al and dance moves from the zombie to rigor mortis. Costumes are scary good with ghostly details like tire tracks across the back and nooses. There are a few awkward scene changes and special effects, but nothing to detract from an otherwise spooktacular show.
As Director Debbie Barber-Eaton writes in her program notes, this is a show about the “family to which we all secretly wish to belong.” Your inner child will want to see it again and again — even without Cousin Itt. Buy your tickets now, before they all vanish.
Two hours and 45 minutes with intermission. By Marshall Brickman, Rick Elice and Andrew Lippa. Director: Debbie Barber-Eaton. Musical director: David Merrill. Choreographer: Jamie Miller. Costumer: Nikki Gerbasi. Set: Matt Mitchell. Lights: Matt Tillett. Sound: Dan Caughran. Musicians: Ken Kimble, Rich Estrin, Randy Martell, Trent Goldsmith, Reid Bowman, Zach Konick, Randy Neilson and Paul Pesnell.
With the chorus of Addams ancestors: Katie Gardner (bride), Kevin Cleaver (caveman), Michael Ruttum (conquistador), Ashley Gladden (courtesan), Karah Parks (flapper), Mariel White (flight attendant), Christian Gonzalez (gambler), Kristi Dixon (Native American), Nathan Bowen (Puritan) and Brian Mellen (sailor).
Th-Su thru July 25, W July 22, 8:30pm, Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre, 143 Compromise St.. $22; rsvp: 410-268-9212.