Morgantown Theatre Company brings your favorite ooky TV family to the stage all weekend long.
If this weekend’s production of The Addams Family Musical is as good as Morgantown Theatre Company’s social media posts about it, it’s going to be a visual treat and good, silly fun.
“It’s the Addams Family that everybody knows and loves,” says MTC Artistic Director Heath Kale, “but we’re leaning a little more toward the original cartoon aspect—not too realistic.”
A nonprofit children’s theater, MTC puts on six productions a year with the involvement of kids from the 2nd through 12th grades, and lots of them. “We never deny anyone the opportunity to perform,” Kale says. “Addams Family has about 70 actors in it—a lot of ghosts!”
In the show, Wednesday is 18 now, and she’s keeping a secret from her mother, Morticia: She’s getting engaged—to a boy from a “normal” family. “She tells Gomez, and he has a really hard time not telling his wife,” Kale says. “When it comes out, there’s a family rift. The show is about family spats and reconciliation, and it’s about love—Fester even has a relationship with the moon. It’s a very silly, fun time, and the actors have been having so much fun doing it.”
This is not the creepy clan you grew up with, he says.
Whether the Addams Family in your head comes from the mid-century grayscale New Yorker comics, the 1964–66 black and white TV show, the gothic-hued 1990s films The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, or even the more recent Netflix series Wednesday, this production will surprise you visually. “The color palette we’re using is very close to what they used on set in the TV show from the ’60s,” Kale says. “To make it pop in black and white, they had to use vibrant colors.”
Also, it’s a musical. “It’s a little bit more high-octane than the slumbering attitude of the films and the TV shows,” Kale says. “It steers a little closer to the animated versions.”
This show is new for the actors, too—for example, heavier makeup. “The boy who plays Fester, he has a bald cap, and it takes him about an hour and a half to get into full makeup. They’re not used to that—it’s exciting and new for them.
Catch The Addams Family Musical Thursday or Friday at 7 p.m. or Saturday or Sunday at 2 p.m. Reserve your seats online—$15.75 for adults and $10.50 for students.
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