Snap your fingers and watch the dead come alive with the Addams: a family notorious for all things dark and mysterious. They love everything haunted, twisted, and painful. This November, Theatre South is bringing their story to the Ruel E. Tucker Auditorium.
Gomez and Morticia Addams live with their two children, Wednesday and Pugsley, their monster butler, Lurch, and unofficially, their deceased ancestors. Gomez and Morticia have an incredibly close relationship and have always assumed that their daughter loves darkness as much as they do. But, when Wednesday falls in love with Lucas, a boy from a completely opposite and seemingly perfect family, the bonds in both families are tested.
The first of these tests comes early on: Lucas (Jagger Cardinale) proposes to Wednesday (Alyssa Wong). This prompts Wednesday to ask her father, Gomez (Chris Fukuda), for help getting the two families together for dinner on “One Normal Night.” She begs him to keep this a secret from her mother, Morticia (Alexis Dorf), and he reluctantly agrees.
On the night of the dinner, it is revealed that everything about these families, including their personalities and habits, is entirely contradictory. While Gomez and Morticia tell each other everything, Lucas’ parents, Alice (Michelle Harris) and Mal Beineke (Ugin Sun), hide nothing but secrets underneath the flawless facade of their family. In Alice’s eyes, their marriage is being kept alive through her ability to conceal her truths.
Meanwhile, Wednesday tells her brother Pugsley to leave Lucas alone. Hurt and worried about losing his sister for good, Pugsley runs to their grandmother (Iris Du) and snatches Acremonium, a truth-telling serum, from her potion cart.
During dinner, Morticia decides to play “The Game,” Full Disclosure, in which each person must drink from a sacred family chalice and share a secret. Lurch (Jonathan Wu) brings the chalice to the table, and it is during this game that Pugsley puts his plan in motion: he poisons the chalice with the Acremonium right before Wednesday’s turn. Unfortunately, the chalice reaches Alice instead, leading her to sing a very revealing song about how terrible of a husband Mal is. As Alice and Mal start leaving, Wednesday stops them by announcing that she and Lucas are getting married, leaving both Morticia and the Addams’ dead ancestors shocked. As all of these problems arise at the end of the first act, Uncle Fester (David Kagan) takes a beat to talk directly to the audience and orchestrates a “storm” of ancestors, trapping everyone in the Addams’ home.
The Addams Family’s characters were originally created in 1938 and featured in comics that were published in The New Yorker throughout the 20th century. Since then, it has also been brought to many other mediums of entertainment, including television, film, and video games. The musical adaptation of The Addams Family is still fairly new, having debuted on Broadway in April 2010; however, the Addams have remained a family that represents the pinnacle of darkness, grief, and unspeakable sorrow.
Interested in knowing more? Come see Theatre South’s production of The Addams Family at 7:00 p.m. on November 17th and 18th! Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for students, children, and seniors (65+). They are being sold through a website and will also be sold at the door on show nights. Be sure to check out Theatre South’s website for details on upcoming performances! Come spend a late night with the Addams!
