Addams Family: so good it hurts

The Addams family are famous the world over for being both spooky and kooky. However, in this fabulously performed production, the Addams’ faced a nightmare confronted by families everywhere – their kids are growing up!

In this musical rendition of The Addams Family story, Wednesday is 18 years old and has fallen for Lucas Beineke - a “normal” young man from a decidedly straight-laced family. When Lucas and his family come to the Addams’ residence for dinner the clashing values of the respective families bring buried fault lines to the surface and no-one will ever be the same again.

The production, involving children in Years 7, 8 and 9, was joyfully performed, innovatively staged in-the-round and skilfully directed. Speaking personally, it always amazes me how such young children can produce performances that feel so professional.

The engaging story conveys some genuinely deep and painful emotional conflict, and the cast did a brilliant job of dealing with this, but the word that springs most readily to mind when thinking back on this production is fun… a fun story, fun performances, and funny jokes!

Every member of the ensemble cast performed brilliantly and whole-heartedly, displaying confidence and skill in equal measure, with the leads extremely impressive in bringing their characters to life.

The songs were enthusiastically, not to mention bravely, performed. A couple of personal favourites were ‘Pulled’ in which Wednesday (played by Grace Paul) laments being “pulled in a new direction” whilst performing a very apt method of torture on her younger brother (Edward Densem). And ‘Death is Just Around the Corner,’ Morticia’s (Verity Runciman) big musical number in which she takes great comfort from that very thought!

The production was directed by Mr Thomas Frith, Lead Drama Teacher at The Junior School, he said: “With a cast of 60 it was important for me to make sure that every one of the performers could be seen - after all they’ve given up their time and energy to create this show for you! I also wanted to utilise our beautiful theatre’s ability to create a performance that is entirely in the round, allowing the audience to never be more than 4 rows from the action!”

There really is only one way to conclude, and that is to say that the Year 7, 8 and 9 production of The Addams Family was an absolute scream!