We know not if supernatural influence is involved, but time has been exceedingly kind to “The Addams Family.” Originally a one-panel cartoon by Charles Addams appearing in the New Yorker magazine in the 1930s, the macabre cartoon became a popular 1960s television series and, later, a series of popular films and animated shows. Most recently, a streaming service has presented a successful revival of “The Addams Family” focused on the Addams daughter, Wednesday.
“The Addams Family” in this musical is arguably rooted more in the original New Yorker cartoon, freeing the characters — and writers — from the burden of the earlier television and movie treatments. As the show opens, we find that it is the Halloween season and the departed Addams ancestors have escaped the crypt for the occasion. We also meet a new Wednesday, a young woman, morose and cynical, who is also becoming aware that her family may not be the American norm. She is smitten simultaneously with love! Her earnest young love interest, Lucas, has invited his parents to join him for dinner with the Addams, and Wednesday has entrusted her father Gomez with a secret, to wit: she intends to marry the young man of her dreams. Yet in keeping this secret, Gomez faces the wrath of his wife Morticia and damage to their marriage. A kindly Uncle Fester, sometimes very wise and sometimes unhinged, serves as a narrator and mediator for the proceedings.
Jordan B. Stocksdale is outstanding as Gomez, a man tasked with balancing his obligations of father with duties as a husband. Mr. Stockdale does wonderfully at portraying the conflict both poignantly, but with a comic undertone. He also has wonderful solos in the surprisingly moving song “Happy/Sad,” as well as “Not Today” and “Trapped.” He is partnered with an incandescent MaryKate Brouillet as Morticia. Together they perform a spectacular “Tango de Amor,” which also gives the “Addams Family” orchestra an opportunity to shine with vibrant Latin percussion. MaryKate/Morticia is similarly outstanding in the delightful song and dance number “Just Around the Corner.” Lucas is portrayed with verve by Jackson Miller of Alexandria, Virginia; he will also be portraying Rolf in Toby’s upcoming “Sound of Music.”
Anna Phillips Brown and Jeffrey Shankle play Lucas’s mother and father, the highly conventional Alice and Mal Beineke—two characters who turn out to be a bit less conventional than they initially seem, recapturing elements of their 1960s-era selves once more. Wednesday, whom father Gomez affectionately calls that “charming irrepressible bundle of malice,” is excellently portrayed by Lydia Gifford, who sings wonderfully in “Pulled.”
Shawn Kettering is a radiant Uncle Fester, and not merely because he lights up lightbulbs in his mouth! He gives sage advice to the various characters and, while playing the lute on roller skates, serenades the moon in “The Moon and Me,“ a silly but fun love song interweaving here and there strains of Debussy’s “Clair de Lune.” Adam Grabau is also excellent as Lurch, with a performance that might best be described as “revelatory!”
The musical score is superbly conducted in alternate performances by Ross Scott Rawlings and Nathan Scavilla. While the show has a number of somber minor key elements—this is the Addams Family, after all!—the show also brims with bright Broadway moments, such as Uncle Fester’s routine with the ancestors in “But Love.” “Full Disclosure” is also a fun classic Broadway-style sequence in which the whole company shines.
The current production of “The Addams Family,” running through the Halloween season to November 10 at Toby’s Dinner Theater in Columbia, Maryland, is wonderfully directed and choreographed by Mark Minnick. The costume coordination by Janine Sandy and Sarah King is striking, for in many productions of this show the Addams ancestors are presented as in grave shrouds with only hints that they come from different generations. Here, however, they reveal more personality, in part due to their detailed dress from different eras. There is an eighteenth-century ghost dressed in Rococo style, a flapper ghost appareled in 1920s fashions, and even a ghost resembling one of the Andrew Sisters in WAC uniform from the World War II era. Finally, one member of the ghostly ensemble is a medieval monastic dressed with tunic and cowl; he turned out be Carson Crosby, who hails from Virginia and was recently seen in “Ride the Cyclone” at Reston’s NextStop Theatre.
“The Addams Family,” with its macabre yet festive themes, is wonderful entertainment for Halloween and a different take on what has become an enduring part of American popular culture. For more information, please visit Toby’s website: tobysdinnertheatre.com
