Meet the Addams Family and their butler in Wharfemede Productions’ The Addams Family Musical: Abbie Law’s Wednesday, left, Matthew Warry’s Pugsley, Henrietta Linnemann’s Morticia, Chris Gibson’s Lurch, Zander Fick’s Gomez, Nick Sephton’s Uncle Fester and Rosy Rowley’s Grandma. Picture: Simon Trow
JOKE shop bats and giant cobwebs and director Helen “Bells” Spencer in a rather fetching wig greet Halloween week theatregoers on the stairway to Wharfemede Productions’ production of The Addams Family Musical.
Enter the black box theatre, where more bats and cobwebs fill the walls, and it is immediately striking how the audience is younger than usual at Theatre@41, now full of families. All this week’s performances are sold out, such is the reach of Netflix’s two seasons of Wednesday, whose visual style carries the hallmarks of executive producer Tim Burton, full of fashion flair and camply dark humour while making Jenny Ortega “Gen Z’s scream queen”.
Combining properly tuneful music and smart lyrics by Andrew Lippa, worthy of musical theatre’s golden age, with a deeply kooky, devilishly witty book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, The Addams Family Musical spreads the focus more broadly, while giving the headline story to Abbie Law’s sourpuss Wednesday.
She may have a perma-scowl and carry a crossbow, but Wednesday Addams has fallen in love with a “normal” young man, Dan Crawfurd-Porter’s floppy fringed, chisel-jawed Lucas Beineke, looking every inch the college jock in his varsity bomber jacket.
The masked Ancestors in director Helen Spencer’s nod to commedia dell arte in Wharfemede Productions’ The Addams Family. Picture: Simon Trow
When Wednesday invites Lucas’s ultra-respectable parents (Steven Jobson’s Mal and Connie Howcroft’s Alice) to dinner, two cultures will clash: the uptight Beinekes, from Ohio, with their unfortunate propensity for wearing yellow, and the eccentric, louche, strangely attractive Addams Family, from metropolitan, arty New York, with their penchant for black in both humour and clothing.
From the familiar theme tune opening to the disembodied hand in the picture frame and two cameo appearances by Cousin Itt (Lao Singhateh, face hidden beneath all that hair), everything is in place for a musical comedy that nods to the nostalgic TV past but also finds it own character, not least through the ghostly presence of the Ancestors, at the beck and call of Nick Sephton’s Uncle Fester.
Drawing on her own commedia dell’arte training in Italy, Spencer kits them out in masks – made with a 3D printer by Sephton – to complement their white clothing to add to their contrast to the Addams family members.
Each family member or retainer is established quickly, from Rosy Rowley’s loose-cannon Grandma to Chris Gibson’s taciturn, towering, gloom-and-doom butler Lurch and Matthew Warry’s Pugsley, whose unconventional relationship with sister Wednesday is rooted in stoic acceptance of being the target of her experiments in torture.
Zander Fick, the classically trained South African singer and actor – and software engineering director by day – has excelled on the York stage since his arrival in 2023 and here he gives his best performance yet as Gomez Addams, the father who often has to think on his feet to cover his initial actions.
Hair slicked back and turned jet black, pinstripe suit as immaculate and neat as his pencil moustache, accent a conflation of Hispanic and American, his Gomez leads the show with a showman’s panache, eyebrow-raised comic timing, nimble feet and a wondrous singing voice.
He combines delightfully with the glacial hauteur of Henrietta Linnemann’s Morticia, his elegant, aloof wife with her exacting standards and often contrasting strategy. She sings superbly too, whether solo in Just Around The Corner or in the stand-out duet, Live Before We Die, with Fick’s Gomez.
Howcroft, always such a thrilling singer, brings the house down at the climax to Act One with her no-holds-barred rendition of Waiting, while Sephton’s love-struck Fester sings to his true love, the Moon at her fullest, in The Moon And Me, the show’s most unexpected yet beautiful moment.
Howcroft’s choreography is another joy, utilising the Ancestors to the max, capitalising on the clash between the itchy feet of Fick’s Gomez and sang-froid of Linnemann’s Morticia and exploring the differing physicality within the company, not least Gibson’s lumbering Lurch and Rowley’s crumpled Grandma, to humorous effect.
Musical director James Robert Ball has a ball with Lippa’s wonderful songs, his band at once playful and diligent, sprightly and fun.
Wharfemede Productions bring the “wonderfully weird world” of the distinctly dysfunctional Addams Family to glorious Gothic life, perfectly timed for Halloween. As Spencer puts it, “Beneath all the darkness, eccentricity and wonderfully questionable behaviour lies a story about love, belonging and celebrating things that make us different.” And that, by the way, is the very essence of theatre, whether performing or watching.
Wharfemede Productions present The Addams Family Musical, Theatre@41, Monkgate, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. SOLD OUT. For returns only: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.