Last night, Addams Family opened for the second time at RHS. Director Jennifer Dithridge-Saigeon redid this show to go out with a bang as a high-school musical director. The energy in this show bounced off the walls from the moment I sat down and flipped through my program all the way to the final bows. Addams Family: The Musical follows Wednesday Addams and her eccentric family as she attempts to Romeo and Juliet her marriage to a very average teenage boy named Lucas. There are many familiar faces in the cast this time; Kendal Chapin as Wednesday, Ryan Petterson as Lucas, Trinity Abbot as Morticia, Kyle Schmidt as Gomez, and EOT’s own Landon Marroquin as Mal Beineke.
Truly, this show was brilliant. The jokes were good and landed well, the casting was excellent, and the sense of teamwork radiating off the stage was overwhelming. All of the recurring bits were so well-timed and the actors had a good sense of where to be and when. Spencer Davis’ Lurch in particular was hilarious. No words, just various sounds that made me laugh when the rest of the scene was quiet by design. There was a lot of attention to detail within the characters down to the way they walked, talked, and moved their hands. Many of the cast members are graduating seniors, and to have their final show be such an intensive one didn’t come without its challenges.
There were a few technical flaws with the mics refusing to work at some spots, but they really weren’t an issue and didn’t take away from my understanding of the plot. Many characters in Addams Family have accents or heavily-characterized voices, and while having those accents was a great touch, I lost a good chunk of the dialogue because the accent meshed those words together. Combined with the music and the ensemble, there were a few times when Gomez was talking on stage and it all sounded like the parents from the Peanuts.
“Just so much time, so much effort, so much reblocking and choreographing and just memorizing, and four months of hard work, it paid off a lot,” said Petterson.
Not every play can pull off a fourth-wall break, but Jordan Wuthridge as Fester pulled it off elegantly in her bald cap. It was treated as just another bit, no big thing, just a guy in love with the moon talking to a room full of people watching his crazy family fall to pieces.
I want to talk about Kendal Chapin. Everyone wants to talk about Kendal Chapin. She was beautiful in High School Musical, but her role as Wednesday Addams had me sitting on the edge of my seat. Her voice is absolutely stunning and had so much chemistry with the rest of the cast. Wednesday’s relationship with Gomez was so touching and if someone told me that she was a professional actress moonlighting as a high schooler I wouldn’t even question it. I had the opportunity to speak with her after the show and she was an absolute delight with so much love to give to her cast and director.
“I just love having everyone together in the same scene,” says Chapin.
The set design was simplistic but still told the story well with just enough to sell the location, but not enough to get in the way of the actors. One of my favorite set pieces was the gate over the left side door where the ancestors entered from at the beginning of the show purely because of how gorgeous it was. All the pieces obviously had a lot of love poured into them by the crew.
With Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the inclusion of a musical number was a bit unorthodox and didn’t always translate well. But with Addams Family, characters breaking out into song and dance as they wished was so refreshing and I loved how seamless the transition was between speaking and singing.
Tango De Amor was definitely my favorite dance number in the whole show. Using Gomez’s Spanish roots to include such a fun style of dancing that isn’t really seen much in musical theater was a great visual treat. The stage was simple, with not a prop or set piece to be seen except the permanent ones, and that let me focus completely on all the cultural references included in the dance. The red fabric pinned to Gomez’s shoulder and the way Morticia’s dress was pinned up to replicate the traditional style of dress for tangos was a great touch that made the scene all the better.
Some shows push their ensemble to the wings, but Addams Family relied on their ensemble to push the show along and they provided a lot of the visual aspects. Every member of the ensemble had a different story going and I would definitely go again just to piece together what everyone was and what their relations are to each other.
There are five more dates for you to catch Addams Family; April 26th and 27th, and May 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. This show is worth it. Opening night was a blast and it was so clear to me as an audience member how much love the cast members have for their show and for each other. Every seat in the theater is a good angle to see it in and I would absolutely recommend going to see it to have one very abnormal night.
