| What: The Addams Family – the Musical When and where: December 14 to 2024 to February 2, 2025 at the Homecoming Centre Bookings: Webtickets. Cast: Includes Samantha Peo, Tiaan Rautenbach, Bethany Dickson, Candice van Litsenborgh, Brendan van Rhyn, Chad Baai and Jordyn Schaefer Director: Garth Tavares Choreography: Nkosinathi Mazwai Set, costume and lighting design: Marthinus Basson and Nicolaas de Jongh Hair and make-up designer: Guilma Stander Sound design: David Classen Props and puppetry maker: Elana-Marié Snyman Producer: Mother City Theatre Productions |
The Addams Family, the musical is on in Cape Town at the Homecoming Centre (formerly the Fugard) until February 2, 2025. This all South African production (cast and creatives) is a triumph in concept, staging and performance (song and dance) – brave and audacious. The production is hyper theatrical, laced with opera, vaudeville, clowning and intense physical performance and not like any musical that I have seen. I went home and read the script (online). One could say that I am obsessed with this musical, the script; this crazy and mad and wonderful production.
This is the maiden production of Mother City Theatre Productions which was established in early 2024. The musical, was first staged in April 2010 on Broadway, after a warm up run in Chicago, the year before. According to Mother City Theatre Productions, the season in Cape Town, is its first professional staging in South Africa. Although the Broadway production won several Obie Awards and was nominated for two Tony Awards, the reviews that I read were generally lacklustre. I braced myself. Watching the Mother City production and I was blown away, surprised and delighted. There is no live band but the backtracks are synched well the voice and dialogue so one can hear. Impressive sound design by David Classen.
The book by Marshall Brickmann and Rick Elice, music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa is based on characters by Charles Addams, the creator of the Addams Family franchise. The narrative revolves around a gathering of the Addams family (with their ancestors lurking around) as they deal with the daughter Wednesday who has invited her “normal” boyfriend and his parents for dinner. The setting is the Addams’ Family mansion in New York’s Central Park. Yes, there are riffs off Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with lovers transcending the gulf of their backgrounds, through love. Family is everything so it ends well and that is great. We need to be uplifted and be entertained.
The plotline sounds mawkish and hale and hearty but in the hands of the creative team, led by director Garth Tavares, this is a production which is about embracing, reveling and heightening the wild and wacky side of darkness and fears. Listen carefully to the references in the script. For instance, pinging off the Romeo and Juliet story, there is a potion, “acrimonium”, a concoction cooked up by Grandma Addams (deliciously played by Candice van Litsenborgh) to help ebullient people to recalibrate their dark side. Being too happy will not do.
Let me put it this way: The Addams Family South Africa is like an ossuary of love. It is a tomb, where love and family are enshrined. The stunning conceptual set design by Marthinus Basson and Nicolaas de Jongh is made up of Perspex vitrines – displays of specimens – filled with bones, skulls and plants – suspended and preserved indefinitely. The installation like set is the space of the living-dead ghouls and ancestors who are intertwined with this off-beat family, which is tuned into the notion that “normal is an illusion.” Mirrors and reflective surfaces magnify the sense of illusion and refraction as things shape shift, charged by the lighting design, also by Basson and de Jongh.
The banqueting table in the family dinner scene is made of trolleys from a hospital, I am told by Basson. I thought that they were dissection tables. It reminds me of an operating theatre. The moon – the love interest of Uncle Fester (outstanding performance by Yahto Kraft) dangles over the spectre of love. Images are vivid and often disturbing. Puppetry (made by Elana-Marié Snyman) enhances the magical realism – horror and joy of each scene. The detail in this production is extraordinary – watch the puppets, props and costumes (check out the tattoo-like imprinting the ancestor’s body suits). I love Grandma’s crocheted coat with appliquéd skulls.
Cantilevered off the ossuary of love is this tableaux of wacky creatures who make up the Addams Family and the Beineke Family, brilliantly performed, with an inspired cast. Samantha Peo (Morticia Addams) and Tiaan Rautenbach (Gomez Addams) are stunning as the love and sex obsessed couple, climaxing in the end with a fiery tango. It is posed: What is it that every Addams hopes for? Morticia: “Darkness, grief, and unspeakable sorrow.” Gomez: “I love it when you talk sexy”. It is very Gothic but there is allure in the horror.
Bethany Dickson (Alice Beinke) and Chris van Rensburg (Mal Beineke) as the “normal” parents of Lucas Beineke from Ohio break out of their repressions and fears as they intersect with the Addams family. The Fleur du Cap Theatre award winning Dickson is a revelation as Alice- unrecognisable as Bethany Dickson and very different to any other role that I have seen her in.
Jordyn Schaefer conjures up a compelling and feisty Wednesday Addams, breaking from family tradition, in her yellow dress (as laid out in the script), wearing yellow Crocs and schlepping her bow and arrow (she has a permit) as she romances the dashing Lucas Beineke (terrific performance by Chad Baai).
Garth Tavares who is senior musical theatre director at The Waterfront Theatre School has created magic with this production. There are a lot of bodies on stage (21 performers), puppets and it could have been a mess but everything is carefully articulated. Choreography by Nkosinathi Mazwai is precise, minimalist at times and bold and expressive when needed (oolala the tango with Morticia and Gomez).
Talking of minimalist, Brendan van Rhyn is a sensation as Lurch, the Addams’ butler. His performance is a master-class in non-verbal and physical theatre. Plot spoiler alert: Lurch is essentially muted (besides from grunts, growls and gestures) until the final scenes when his bass-baritone voice rips across the stage with a song, Move Toward The Darkness. This is full throttle opera with van Rhyn’s classical singing training coming through. The multi award winning actor told me that he trained in classical singing while at school and while on a gap year in the UK, where he studied at Royals Schools (different to the Royal College of Music). Watch the interaction between Lurch and the ensemble in the opening scene, with gestural comedic moves which are hilarious.
There is a great deal of fun in this production and a prompt to laugh at our fears. In his programme note, Tavares says: “Our goal has been to transport the audience to a world where the unconventional is celebrated, and darkness is not something to fear but to cherish.” Bravo! I loved The Addams Family, the musical, South Africa- a must-see.
Note: The Addams Family, the musical SA is suitable for family audiences (six years and above). The humour and language is not explicit but it is not a “kid’s show”.
✳ The Addams Family, the Musical, December 14 to 2024 to February 2, 2025 at the Homecoming Centre, Cape Town, South Africa, produced by Mother City Theatre Productions. Pic: Jesse Kramer. Pic supplied.
