Newcastle Theatre Royal – until Saturday 12 February 2022
3.5***
The minute the music begins, the audience instantly finger click back in time to the very familiar tune, introducing The Addams Family.
Wednesday Addams has grown up and fallen head over heels in love. Lucas Beineke is an all-American guy with an uptight father and a mother who speaks in rhyme. Wednesday’s Father Gomez finds himself trapped between the two women he adores. To keep his daughter’s secret, or to continue to share openly with the matriarch of the macabre, Morticia.
Wednesday and Lucas want their families to meet so they can get their blessing to get married, but the Addams are anything but normal. Living in a house haunted by the ghosts of their ancestors and with a family that includes brother Pugsley, who enjoys being tortured, Grandma Addams who makes her potions, Lurch the Butler and Uncle Fester, the family makes an attempt at normality for their daughter for one night.
Designer Diego Pitarch’s effective set has all the gloomy shadows and dank walls that one would expect. With Ben Cracknell’s wonderful lighting, which completely makes the staging come alive. The set is just the right side of dilapidated, with smooth changes facilitated by the cast. Andrew Lippa’s songs are decent but with the exception of the opening aren’t particularly catchy or memorable, but Bob Broad’s outstanding musical direction and the live orchestra (Catherine Benson, Luke Davies, Eleanor Sandbrook, Felix Strickland, Oliver Lewis, Alexia Barbera and Richard Burden) play them excellently. A talented ensemble forms the deceased ancestors of the family Addams, adding to the dark and enigmatic atmosphere thanks to bewitching choreography by Alistair David. Visually the show is amazing.
Leading the cast as Gomez Addams is the brilliant Cameron Blakely, the loving father and devoted husband torn between being supportive of his daughter and truthful to his wife. At his side, Joanne Clifton is gorgeously gruesome as Morticia; and Kingsley Morton is boisterous and butch with impressive pipes as she belts her heart out as Wednesday Addams. The surprise scene-stealer of the night though is Scott Paige as Uncle Fester, our narrator who is in love with the Moon.
But where’s the fun in being mundane? Where’s the joy in being considered ‘normal’? Strip back the spooky kookiness and the witty score, and at its heart, this is a story about two families coming together, and the message is quite simple – different is good, honesty is key and love conquers all.