By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
As Gomez proclaims at the end of “The Addams Family: A New Musical,” “welcome to the family.”
They may be creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky lot, but at heart they’re just a loving family. The show is celebrates those Addams Family values songs at once comic and heartfelt, and exuberant dance numbers.
“The Addams Family” is on stage at the Bowling Green Performing Arts Center Thursday, April 18, Friday, April 19, and Saturday,April 120 at 7 p.m., and Sunday, April 21, at 3 p.m. Click to purchase tickets. The musical with book by Marshall Brickman and music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa is theBowling Green High School all-school musical, directed by Jo Beth Gonzalez with music and vocal direction by Beth Vaughn and Shawn Hudson, and choreography by Bob Marzola.
Wednesday (Rose Walters) has the usual teen age embarrassment about her parents. She just needs them to act “normal” when her boyfriend Lucas Beineke (Drew Thomas) brings his family over for dinner. She’s done her part – taking down a duck to be served as the main course. And in deference to the visitors they’ll even cook it.
That’s just what loving parents would do, and Gomez (Dylan Haught) and Morticia (Libby Barnett) are loving parents. That puts Gomez in a bind. He and Morticia never keep secrets from each other, yet Wednesday shares with him that she and Lucas are engaged, and she doesn’t want him to tell Morticia. Wednesday expects her mother will not react well and will try to stop nuptials before they are even announced at the end of the dinner.
The Beinekes – Mal (Zack Mangan) and Alice (Reagan Otley) – make their way from Ohio to the Addams’ shambling house in Central Park. They find the home strange, but attribute it to the Addams Family being sophisticated New Yorkers.
Uncle Fester (Isaac Sands) has asked the ghosts of past Addamses to hang around. Fester for an aged bachelor is quite the romantic, and in “Fester’s Manifesto’ expresses his desire for matters to go well for his niece and her beau.
Having two dozen or so ghosts wafting around the place would not seem to benormal, but they do add greatly to the entertainment value.
Rounding out the household is Pugsley (Rory Mott), Lurch (Ben Melendez) and Grandma (Mona Foreman). They make for a ghoulish lot.
Lurch serves impassively as the butler and Gomez’ dueling partner. Grandma is frenetic and grouchy and not quite connected to what’s going on. Pugsley, true to kid brothers, is always up to making an explosion. He’s concerned, though, that should Wednesday marry, she’ll not want to torture him anymore.
His concerns lead him to spike the family chalice with truth serum when they play the family game of Full Disclosure. This leads to turning the matronly Alice, who spontaneously talks in doggerel, into a wild woman with her own needs. She has already confided her marital woes to Morticia face in “Secrets.”
Gomez is the effervescent heart of the show. Never down for long. He admits in “Happy Sad” that he’s glad to see his daughter grow up, but at the same time sad. And his passion for his wife is unstinting as is evident in their duet “Live Before We Die.”
The Addams family shares that philosophy with their visitors from Ohio, and with audiences all over including Bowling Green.
