Arts > Theatre
The Addams Family
27/04/22
The ghoulish characters created by Charles Addams have certainly developed a life of their own since they appeared in cartoon form on the pages of The New Yorker magazine back in 1938. They went on to star in a cult television show in the 1960's, transferred to the big screen in the first of five cinema outings in 1991, and learnt to sing and dance their way across Broadway in 2010. 'The Addams Family – The Musical Comedy' reached the Edinburgh Festival Theatre in 2017, and is now packing out theatres on its second UK tour. This week it visits Norwich Theatre Royal.
Whilst I can vaguely remember the original television series, my recollections are slightly blurred by The Munsters, another black and white classic that also used a dysfunctional family to satirise suburban American life. However, it is Anjelica Huston's performance as Morticia Addams in Barry Sonenfeld's cinema film, alongside Raul Julia as husband Gomez, Christina Ricci as daughter Wednesday, Jimmy Workman as son Pugsley, and Carel Struycken as the towering butler Lurch, that many of us still remember. Big shoes to fill, indeed.
Fortunately for us, director Matthew White brings all of these characters back to life with sparkling clarity, and The Thing is still a safe hand, thanks to a script by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, and a musical score from Andrew Lippa.
The Addams Family are now, somehow, living in a rambling mansion in New York, in the middle of Central Park. It is the annual gathering of family members (living, dead, and undecided) where we learn that daughter Wednesday (played by Kingsley Morton) is planning to marry nice, normal all-round American boy, Lucas (Ahmed Hamad). A date is set for an introductory 'meet-the-parents' dinner to be hosted by Gomez (Cameron Blakely) and Morticia (Joanne Clifton), to which Lucas' mother and father, Mal (Sean Kingsley) and Alice (Kara Lane) are to be invited. The scene is set, therefore, for some classic domestic comedy in a classically ghoulish location.
The stage sets impressively switch from exterior to interior with just the movement of a couple of side screens, but our eyes remain firmly on the characters. Cameron Blakely is masterly suave as Gomez in his double-breasted pin-stripe suit, and adopts a playful attitude to his character (a couple of ad-libbed moments seem to have several of the cast on the point of corpsing, as well as tickling the audience's collective funny bone). Joanne Clifton is sensationally sultry as Morticia, with a great vocal performance, and comedic timing as spot-on as her dance moves were in her previous life as a professional ballroom dancer on 'Strictly'. Sean Kingsley plays it just as straight as it should be as as Mal Bieneke (although the John McEnroe style headband is a neat touch), but Kara Lane is exotically gorgeous as his wife Alice. She also possesses the most incredible singing voice – there were moments when the hairs on the back of my neck really started to rise.
The love-hate sibling rivalry between goth-punk Wednesday and younger brother Pugsley (Grant McIntyre) is played to perfection, and Ahmed Hamad's Lucas captures perfectly all the awkward nervousness of meeting the parents of the girlfriend for the first time.
Other audience-pleasing performances, and some classic comedic moments, come via Valda Aviks as matriarchal Grandma, Scott Paige as misunderstood, moon-loving Uncle Fester, and the grunting, towering stone-faced presence of Dickon Gough as Lurch, the butler. And full marks to the eight dancing 'ancestors', whose presence not only oversees the entire proceeding but spectacularly enhance the musical numbers.
For a crypt-kicking delight of an evening, The Addams Family are your perfect ghoulish hosts.
