View from the Green Room: Monster fun with the Addams Family
The late Fergus Power
On a ghastly palette of midnight blue and ghostly pink with an occasional white spot, Carrick-on-Suir Musical Society conjured up a world of ghosts, goblins and ghouls that delighted a full house in the Dick Meany Theatre.
Roars of laughter, spontaneous cheers for solos, applause for clever choreography and a sustained standing ovation at curtain said it all.
The Addams Family Musical sparkled from start to finish. Superb performances and exceptional direction from Andrew Holden brought us two and a half hours of joy on a bitterly cold night.
The show itself is exceptional. The libretto is clever and ironic where everything is what is not. Bad is good, black is colour, cruelty is delightful and death is fluid.
Dead ancestors hang about the Gothic Home of the Year like last year’s cobwebs with goblins sitting on balustrades to warn off good-doers.
It’s a script that worships chaos and is studded with Trumpian delights… "Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly… I feel so good now, I'm gonna go out and chase automobiles.”
The Addams Family’s motto boasts “Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc – We gladly feast on those who would subdue us.”
This is a show that every musical theatre performer would give an eye-tooth for a part. The characters are brilliantly drawn and the audience can only expect the unexpected. Cameos stand out like ballerinas at a funeral. Like the superb Irene Malone who plays Grandma Addams, although no one is quite sure just whose granny she is, or Evan Boland’s delightful Pugsley, who just lovvves to be tortured and asks his mother to read him nightly horror stories to send him off to sleep in nightmare-land.
Liadhain O'Shea is superb as daughter Wednesday – a gothic delight in inky black with a face that never smiles. Nevertheless, she falls in love with straight-laced Lucas and convinces him to embrace a life that rejects convention.
Despite shooting birds with a crossbow and torturing her little brother, she remains a child at heart. Ah…shucks!
Morticia delights on bestowing a mother’s blessing on her marriage and future life… "may your children give you as much grief as you’ve given me”.
The delightfully normal Lucas Beneike (Cormac O’Donovan) is perfect as Wednesday’s preppy boyfriend Lucas who, understandably, struggles to adjust to his inky-black girlfriend’s demands… ”I can be impulsive; I just need time to think about it.”
Eoin Sheedy has a remarkable singing range, dances a cool tango and is witty and funny as the exasperated father Gomez searching for answers from the ultimate dysfunctional family. And all this while trying his best to keep his morbid wife Morticia happy.
Sandra Power is perfect as the remote and detached inky-clad Morticia who only approves of crazy worlds with inverted values… "bright colours are only for people who have no inner life.”
Sandra’s Morticia has a condescension that would make a crocodile look twice but her tango with Gomez is an unexploded mine of passion.
Jordan Freeman was superb in the stand-out part of Lucas’s mother Alice, who transforms from wifely wimp to assertive harridan and who brought the house down with her big ballad “Waiting” while prostrate on the Addams dining room table.
Michael Raggett completes the in-laws as Lucas’s father Mal who attempts to bring a touch of normality to the madness of the Addams clan but who is destined to fail miserably.
On the night, choreographer Keith Dwyer-Greene stepped in for the bereaved Caolán Deehy-Power to give a real crowd-pleasing and loveable performance as the loony Uncle Fester - the romantic-at-heart loony in love with the moon.
Neill Bourke is as deadpan as…well… a dead pan as the Gothic mute-butler Lurch who sings us out with “Move toward the Darkness”.
Directors Andrew Holden and choreographer Keith Dwyer-Greene have great fun with the characters, the plotline, the quirky black humour and leave the audience with a strong sense of the insane values of the Addams clan.
Costumes, hairs and make-up move from dark and ghastly to a chorus of gothic ghouls with ghostly white faces and nightdresses that float around John O’Donoghue’s dingy, draughty, and derelict-looking graveyard set, while Alan McCormack’s lighting is a moody-broody palate on a chilly, pitch-black night all set against a run-down graveyard.
A great night at the Dick Meany Theatre.
This column is dedicated to Fergus Power who was a lifelong stalwart of Carrick-on-Suir Musical Society and whose son Caolán (current Carrick-on-Suir Musical Society Chairperson) played Uncle Fester in the later performances. Fergus shared his love of theatre with Carrick audiences and will always be remembered as the Dame in Carrick’s pantos. Fergus played many roles with his society. He was Chairperson, President, Front of House Manager, Panto Dame and Bingo Caller to name but a few of the roles he undertook and always with his usual charm and smile. God bless you Fergus; you were one of our own.
