The creepy, kooky family next door

PLAY REVIEW /// ‘The Addams Family’



SWEET AND PETITE—The ghouls come out on stage at Westlake High School in “The Addams Family” musical. From left are: Paul Hurley, Brianna McCarthy, Tyler Marquis, Matthew Omidghaemi, Samanta Smart, Milena Radovich and Kayla Jou. Courtesy of Barbara Mazeika

SWEET AND PETITE—The ghouls come out on stage at Westlake High School in “The Addams Family” musical. From left are: Paul Hurley, Brianna McCarthy, Tyler Marquis, Matthew Omidghaemi, Samanta Smart, Milena Radovich and Kayla Jou. Courtesy of Barbara Mazeika

Many baby boomers fondly recall the 1960s when supernatural sitcoms like “Bewitched,” “My Favorite Martian” and “The Munsters” ruled the airwaves.

Today those shows are long gone and can only be seen on retro cable networks. But there’s one such show from that era that has been successfully revived in films and as a Broadway musical: “The Addams Family.”

The creepy, kooky Addams characters adapted from drawings by New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams were first exhumed in 1991 with a successful motion picture, followed by a sequel two years later.

In 2010, the delightfully macabre musical, with songs by Andrew Lippa and a gag-filled script by Lippa, Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman, became an unlikely Broadway hit and is now playing in community theaters and schools across the country.

The Westlake High School theater arts program, directed by DeDe Burke, produced the latest local incarnation of the show, which played April 21 and 22 at the school’s Carpenter Family Theatre.

One of the reasons for the continued popularity of “The Addams Family” is its underlying theme, expressed by spidery matron Morticia Addams as “normal is an illusion.” In today’s world of heightened sensitivity toward those who are different (e.g., LGBTQ and immigrants), the Addamses come across as a peculiar but harmless family of eccentric ghouls.

The plot of the musical version of “The Addams Family” is nothing new—just another variation of “La Cage Aux Folles.” The charm of show comes from Lippa’s tunefully Latinesque score and clever lyrics.

Any good production of “The Addams Family” needs a solid lead, and WHS had it with senior Tyler Marquis as family patriarch Gomez Addams. Marquis’ keen sense of comic timing and swashbuckling Spanish flair perfectly meshed with Samantha Smart’s Cher-like turn as Gomez’s wife, Morticia.

“Trapped” is probably Gomez’s best moment, with lines such as “Like a bull in the ring of the moderate right wing, I’m trapped,” while Morticia excels in the vaudeville-style “Just Around the Corner.”

Marquis and Smart make an elegant pair, especially in the show’s penultimate number, “Tango de Amor.”

Milena Radovich (double-cast with Jenna Marquis) plays teenaged Wednesday Addams, who is in love with “normal” boyfriend Lucas Beineke (Andres Cabrera).

The two want to get their parents together for dinner, which results in comic mayhem as jealous younger brother Pugsley (Kayla Jou) accidentally misdelivers a spiked beverage to Lucas’ mother (the wonderful Katelyn Waters, double-cast with Maggie Henry), resulting in an over-the-top confessional about her loveless marriage to her straight-arrow, dullard husband, Mal (Josh Olivas).

Radovich is superb in her two “belt” numbers, “Pulled” and “Crazier Than You,” and properly maintains the morose deadpan required of her character.

Paul Hurley came the closest to approximating the voice of any of the original television characters, Jackie Coogan’s Uncle Fester, with a strangled voice and physical charm, especially on the lovely Debussy-inspired “The Moon and Me,” surrounded by the family’s parasol-twirling ancestors.

Fester’s love affair with the moon (portrayed here in human form by Emma Hoehn) was concocted solely to drive home the show’s most outrageous pun in the final scene, a pop culture reference to Jackie Gleason’s “The Honeymooners” that escapes younger audiences but is hilarious to those who grew up with the show.

Also contributing laughs are Brianna McCarthy as the ancient potion-mistress Grandma and Matthew Omidghaemi as the hulking, grunting butler Lurch.