Imogen Clark reviews The Addams Family on stage until Saturday at the King's Hall in Ilkley.
There is a moment early in Upstagers' new production of The Addams Family when ghostly figures start drifting through the auditorium before the curtain has even gone up, unsettling audience members in their seats and setting the tone for a night that never really lets up from there. By the time the full company launches into the opening number, it is already clear this is a show with confidence to match its ambition.
Andrew Lippa's musical, based on Charles Addams' much-loved cartoons, finds Wednesday Addams grown up and in love with the reassuringly ordinary Lucas Beineke, much to the quiet horror and delight of her wonderfully unconventional family. When she asks her father Gomez to keep a secret from her mother Morticia, the stage is set for a night of comedy, chaos and unexpectedly, real heart.
The performances of the principal cast were impressive across the board. Not a weak link anywhere. Mike Riley brings a manic, irrepressible energy to Gomez, and finds genuine tenderness in "Happy Sad", his lament for a daughter growing up and away from him. As Morticia, Bethany Gregory is his match, delivering "Secrets" and "Just Around the Corner" with the kind of vocal control and storytelling that lifts a song well beyond mere comic turn. Together they make the Addams marriage, tested but never in doubt, one of the two emotional spines of the piece.
Emily Mitchell is a delight as Wednesday, bringing genuine feeling to a young woman caught between the family she loves and a future she is not sure how to choose. Her rendition of "Pulled" is one of the night's highlights. Ralph Smeaton is touching as Pugsley, capturing a younger brother's fear of being left behind, while Landon Crowther's Fester is a gift of a narrator, part chaos agent and part romantic, with "Moon and Me" landing as both very silly and rather beautiful. Emma Victoria Smith is a fabulously unhinged, scene-stealing Grandma, and Tom Booth's Lurch proves that a great performance doesn't need many words. His grunts alone tell a story.
The Beineke provide the “normal” family but it is soon clear that they also have their own problems. Sarah Huby's Alice is a real triumph, taking a character who could easily stay two-dimensional and using "Waiting" to turn her into one of the evening's most affecting moments, both funny and quietly heartbreaking in equal measure. Mike Smith gives Mal a believable arc from uptight patriarch to a man remembering what actually matters, and Alex Wright makes Lucas easy to root for as the outsider trying to do right by everyone.
Special mention should go to the ensemble of Ancestors, whose ghostly presence threads through the entire show. Each has clearly worked on their own story and while audiences may only catch fragments of it, the collective effect adds a real richness to the production.
Behind the scenes, co-directors John Clark and Andrew Hewitt, alongside choreographers Lily Normington and Bea Whiteley, have obviously worked hard to find the truth underneath the show's outrageous humour and it shows. The company numbers are drilled to a sharp precision without ever losing their sense of fun and the extended "Full Disclosure" sequence that closes the first act, with the full company moving in tightly choreographed chaos, is a genuine set-piece highlight. Musical director Phil Walsh and his twelve-piece orchestra do full justice to Lippa's score throughout and the show's finale, which trades spectacle for something quieter and more affecting, is all the stronger for the restraint.
The production values match the performances. An atmospheric set that shifts locations with real theatrical sleight of hand, costumes that do a huge amount of storytelling on their own and a lighting design that adds depth and complements the action beautifully, without ever overwhelming the audience.
What Upstagers have pulled off here is not just a funny, polished night of musical theatre, though it is certainly that, but a production that makes an audience genuinely care about a family who insist, loudly and gleefully, that they are "not normal." By the end, it is hard not to recognise a little of your own family in theirs, which is exactly when theatre works best.
Leaving the King's Hall, it was hard not to overhear the same conversation repeated. Disbelief, of the best kind, that a local theatre group can turn out a production with such high performance and production values. It is a credit to the skill and enthusiasm of everyone involved, both in front of the curtain and behind it, and a reminder of how fortunate we are to have talent like this on our doorstep, giving up so much of its time to entertain the local community.
The Addams Family runs at the King's Hall, Ilkley until Saturday 11 July, with performances at 7pm (Wednesday to Friday), and a matinee (1.30pm) and evening show (6.30pm) on Saturday. Tickets start from £14 and are available from www.upstagers.org.uk/boxoffice.
Co-director John Clark spoke to Alex Cann on Your Ilkley breakfast earlier in the week, listen via the Your Ilkley Highlights here.
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