Review: The Addams Family at The Hayes

Review by Carly Fisher

The Addams Family may not sit in the upper echelon of the musical theatre canon but if you're looking for a fast moving, witty musical full of easily enjoyed songs and famously familiar characters, you cannot go past this show as a night of just pure entertainment.

The show's book has always been secondary to the enduring appeal of Charles Addams' iconic characters and Andrew Lippa's infectiously entertaining score. In fact, if you really think too much about the book, it's riddled with plot holes and soap opera level drama...but that may also be what makes this musical great. When a production understands this duality and balances accordingly, The Addams Family: The Musical is a hard show to pass up and the team at Joshua Robson Productions have found that perfect line of sincerity and outlandish humour.

The cast by and large is strong but it is Erika Heynatz, whose Morticia is effortlessly commanding, who steals the stage. Heynatz possesses the glamour, wit and dry elegance that define the character, grounding the production with a performance that is both vocally assured and theatrically magnetic. Even amidst the production's busier moments, Heynatz remains a captivating focal point, embodying Morticia's seductive confidence without ever slipping into caricature.

Director Julia Robertson approaches the material with confidence, allowing the production to move at a brisk pace and trusting the audience to embrace its wonderfully absurd world. While not every directorial choice landed for me, each felt intentional and considered, contributing to a production with a clear artistic identity. Shannon Burns' choreography is undoubtedly one of the production's greatest strengths, bringing vitality and precision that elevates the entire evening. The ensemble numbers burst with energy, balancing the show's cartoonish humour with polished musical theatre technique. Burns makes exceptional use of the intimate Hayes stage, creating movement that feels expansive without becoming cluttered. Together, Robertson and Burns ensure that each member of the Addams family, ancestors included, is given a distinct physical vocabulary - the most interesting of which is Georgia Oom's Pugsley which is embedded with a almost lyrical style movements - reinforcing character while maintaining the show's lightning pace. Zara Stanton's music supervision and Zander Gaal's musical direction similarly ensure Andrew Lippa's score is delivered with confidence, richness and infectious enthusiasm.

The visual world is where the production, for me, does not land. Traditionally, the Addams family inhabits a home that is unsettling because it feels lived in—a gothic mansion overflowing with history, decay and peculiar treasures. Here, Dann Barber's production design instead embraces clean lines, bold graphics and a stylised, almost two-dimensional aesthetic. It gives Instagram viral Dubai cafe more than gothic, ancestral Central Park home, lending the production a contemporary brightness that feels at odds with the deliciously macabre atmosphere so synonymous with these characters. While visually striking and clearly conceived with intention, the design gives the production a more juvenile personality and lacks the texture that has elevated previous productions I have seen of this musical. That said, Barber is a set design genius and this does all work from a functional perspective of fitting this large show into the intimate Hayes Theatre. It just didn't grab me.

The makeup design follows a similar path. With its heightened styling and exaggerated aesthetic, it feels more like Netflix's Wednesday was the source material, rather than the Addams canon. For some characters this makeup design distracts from their performance, masking the achievement of their emotional development through the show.

The cast commits wholeheartedly throughout, and the production never lacks energy or enthusiasm which is imperative because at its heart, this is simply a fun show and this cast has a strong command of the musical comedy it demands. There are some wonderful vocalists with Jenny Guigayoma as Wednesday and Teagan Wouters as Alice being the unquestionable stand outs. The ancestors were an incredibly strong ensemble with real stand out sopranos giving the score a beautiful and rich depth.

This production knows who it is serving - it is an invitation to a younger generation of musical theatre goers to come in and see the show in alignment with pop culture references that are familiar to them. That said, audiences of any generation will enjoy the show if they are up for a fun night of silly, often nostalgic, well delivered musical theatre.

Image Credit: James Reiser