REVIEW: The Addams Family, The Dream Factory, Playbox Theatre, Warwick
Who are you on Halloween? I’m always Uncle Fester and, judging by the number of tiny neighbourhood trick-or-treaters who’ve fled terrified from our door down the many years, I make a pretty diabolically fine fist of the Fest - the bee-knees, or maybe more appropriately, the cockroach’s cajones. Anyway, not anymore. That gig is up, those happy horror days are reduced to dust. I’ve just been fatally out-Festered!
The advent of this appalling tragedy was occasioned by the early arrival of this year’s All Hallows Eve in the shape of Playbox Theatre’s sensational production of the Addams Family musical in which, among many other marvellous maniFestations, Jack Hobson’s Uncle has sent my impersonation slinking off to an early grave. Waddling about the stage, sentimental to his rotten core, a creepy but disarmingly charming crooner with the hots for the Moon, Hobson’s Fester set the comic tone for a performance that was rapturously received across a sold-out run of five shows which proved to be Playbox’s most popular production in years.
While Fester may have been the show’s funny bone, the diminutive, spiv-moustached Tom Lomas playing Gomez was its beating heart. Equal parts lovelorn lothario and confused parent, he’s torn between the divergent wishes of the strong-willed pair who mean the most to him in the whole world – his spouse Morticia and his daughter, Wednesday, who wants to get married but doesn’t want her mum to know just yet. Stuck like a fly in a web in a no-win situation, our dapper dandy-cum-occasional-doofus’ Happy/ Sad number strikes a movingly familiar chord with many a dad in the audience.
Celine Delahaye is the statuesque Morticia, the perfect portrayal of Amazonian gothic. Towering over her devoted Gomez, she is the model glam haughty matriarch whose surety is shaken when she feels mistakenly betrayed by her hubby for keeping her daughter’s secret from her.
Her mirror image is Jennie Beattie’s Alice Beineke, the frustrated mum of Wednesday’s proposed fiancé, Elliot Barlow’s Lucas, a sweet kid learning, with Wednesday’s help, to emerge from the shadow of his straight-laced businessman dad, Liam Browne’s Mal Beineke. Beattie’s transformation from mouse with a propensity for icky Hallmark rhyming into a raging sexually-charged lioness - aided by a potion mistakenly imbibed which was nicked off Mery Sutherland’s hilarious weed-smoking Grandma – is the production’s wildest show-stopper.
By the way, said potion was nicked by Evan Taylor’s lil’ bro Pugsley, and was meant for his sis Wednesday whose romance with Lucas threatens to destroy the love-hate relationship he enjoys with her as expressed, with pitiful poignancy, in his lovely number What If (she never tortures me anymore).
Wednesday is arguably the toughest nut to crack out of the whole nutty lot, given the exquisite lineage of Christina Ricci in the ‘90s movies and Jenna Ortega in the recent Netflix series, so multiple bravos are due to Martha Wainwright whose Wednesday was up for the fight, her performance of Pulled (In A New Direction) the show’s vocal highlight.
Among the many other marvellous moments that roused spontaneous applause were the bits where Dylan Somanathan’s mute, masterfully monstrous Lurch suddenly broke into a deep, unforeseen baritone, Grandma wee-ing on Nathaniel Saleh’s Sweeny Todd’s bonce through a hole in the dinner table, and Fester’s face appearing on the moon in homage, presumably, to the Mighty Boosh.
Also, it must be said that anyone who habitually attends youth theatre productions will know that, to ascertain the true measure of a company’s excellence, you’d best look beyond the leads to the ensemble. Most often there’s the nervous, furtive sideways glancer uncertain of their moves, a nano-beat behind the rest. Well, banish that nagging thought. This ensemble was impeccably on-point.
This was largely down to director Juliet Vankay’s genius idea to give each member of the Addams ancestral ensemble a distinct, individual and recognisable character from the annals of horror. So, aside from the fam - Morticia, Gomez, Granny et al - we are entertained by Esme Fleeman’s Villanelle, Abe Darby’s Freddie Krueger, Gianluca Bucci’s Vlad, Alexandra Newman’s Bellatrix, Floren Smith and Annie Loveday as the twins from The Shining , and a whole host more, all doing their dastardly things within a pitch-perfect, step-tight, sharply-gestured and utterly joyous choreography. In other words, everyone on stage is acting a role which makes for an almost overwhelmingly rich and rewarding viewing experience. Where to look? Everywhere!
Not that it’s critical to the plot or anything but if you stop to think about it, the successful longevity of the Addams Family’s appeal may have something to do with two things. Firstly, more than the ghouls and ghosties, this is really more a show about how families do and don’t get along – something we can all empathise with. And secondly, it’s the fact that, lest we be driven mad by the certainty of our own demise, we tend to live our lives either in frantic forgetfulness of our inevitable fate or engaged in some religion which has invented a comforting fictional afterlife for us. Far healthier, say I, to accept our fate and laugh along with the reaper, a sentiment supremely expressed by Celine Delahaye’s Morticia during her spell-binding number Death Is Just Around The Corner.
Also, before we toddle off into that deep, dark night, if it’s OK with you I’d like to share a little true story that I think Morticia might appreciate. About 10 years ago, on Halloween, Mrs Suth was laid up in Cheltenham Hospital with pneumonia. Our boy, about eight at the time and ready for the evening’s festivities, visited his mum dressed as a bloodstained Chucky. The poor lady in the bed next to the missus passed away that very night and it’s highly conceivable that one of the very last sights she ever saw, drifting in and out of consciousness before slipping off into the great unknown, was our Chucky lad brandishing a plastic hatchet and a wooden steak knife. Gotta laugh, right?
Oh, and what about me? Thanks for asking but honestly, forget about it! I’ll be fine. I’m over Fester. This year I think I’ll try on Nosferatu for size.
