(Photo by Steve DiBartolomeo)
APTOS — They may be creepy and kooky, but the Addams’ are just like any other family you know: they have growing children, they live in a suburban neighborhood and they have that oddball uncle.
But, the Addams Family is just a little more mysterious and spooky than you may be used to.
Cabrillo Stage will bring the iconic family to life when “The Addams Family” makes its debut Thursday.
“The Addams Family,” directed and choreographed by Bobby Marchessault and Makai Hernandez, with musical direction by Mickey McGushin, follows the titular family, who have lived for hundreds of years but are faced with something they’ve managed to avoid for decades: change.
Marchessault is directing his first production for Cabrillo Stage after having performed in four of the theater company’s shows in the past.
“Having a love and appreciation for the company already, it has been an honor to have the privilege of sitting on the other side of the table for this production,” he said.
Although he admitted that he was a bit skeptical of the musical at first glance, Marchessault said he “fell in love with it pretty quickly” after reading through the script.
“It is full of laughs and some great songs,” he said. “I love the ability that the Addams Family has in general, through the comic strips and the movies, to use humor to disarm us and invite us to consider some of the darker sides of ourselves and life.”
Adam Saucedo, who plays Gomez Addams, the patriarch of the family, described his character as a “romantic” and “loyal father,” and said he enjoys capturing “his enthusiasm and adoration for his family.”
“One of my biggest challenges has been to make sure Gomez is relatable and that his problems and feelings are realistic,” he said. “Gomez is known for being eccentric, but there are some really heartfelt and humanistic moments.”
Saucedo, now in his fifth musical for Cabrillo Stage, first auditioned for the theater company’s 2012 productions “A Chorus Line” and “Anything Goes.” But three days later, his appendix burst, and with it, the end of acting for the year.
Or so he thought. Saucedo received a callback for “A Chorus Line,” and once he recovered, he got cast in the production.
Saucedo will be joined onstage by his “wife,” Danielle Crook, who plays Morticia Addams.
Crook has found herself playing a character who is very different from herself, from her demeanor and interests, and of course, her hair.
“It’s fun to transform your basic way of being for a character,” she said, adding that she finds capturing Morticia’s “Mona Lisa smile” a challenge.
Crook has come a long way in her performing career. At 4 years old, she was cast as an oyster/flower in a children’s production of “Alice in Wonderland.”
“I remember all the other flowers were bigger and taller than me, and my oyster costume was a black plastic garbage bag,” she recalled.
John Bridges, who said he plays the “zany lunatic brother of Gomez Addams,” Uncle Fester, noted he is working to make Fester as “realistic” as possible in the realm of the Addams Family story. He noted that Fester is not one of those characters where an actor can draw upon personal experience.
“You have to figure out how to make him a real person without making him Hamlet,” he said.
A longtime viewer of Cabrillo Stage but now only performing in his second production, Bridges has been involved in theater for the past 25 years, attending the inaugural year of the Las Vegas Academy of Performing Arts during his senior year in high school.
“The Addams Family” began as a cartoon drawn by Charles Addams in the 1930s and continued into the 1980s. A sitcom appeared in the 1960s that inspired a series of animated TV shows, along with a movie franchise in the 1990s.
A Broadway musical written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, with the music of Drama Desk Award winner Andrew Lippa, made its debut in 2010. It was nominated for two Tony and eight Drama Desk awards.
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“The Addams Family” will be performed at the Cabrillo Crocker Theater, 6500 Soquel Drive in Aptos, Thursday through Saturday evenings at 7:30 p.m., with weekend matinees at 2 p.m., through July 9. Ticket prices range, with general admission costing $36 for adults, $34 for seniors over 65, and $25 for children ages 5-12.
Cabrillo Stage’s second show of the season, “Beauty and the Beast,” opens July 20.
For information and tickets, visit www.cabrillostage.com.
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The cast weighs in
On performing
Adam Saucedo (Gomez Addams): “Before I got into musical theater, I had been performing as a musician from fourth through 12th grade. I got into theater my last year of high school, went on to earn my B.F.A. in musical theater from Cal State Fullerton and have been performing ever since. My knowledge of music lead me to discover my voice. Singing and acting on stage filled me with such joy and was at the same time a total rush.”
John Bridges (Uncle Fester): “I started in high school. I saw a production that my older sister was involved with at our high school. Honestly, it was a terrible production looking back on it but it sparked something in me. I started taking theater classes the next year and performing in my high school’s production. Once I finished college, I started performing locally in Salinas and Monterey and when I could, I would travel up to the Bay Area to work with different theaters there.”
On ‘The Addams Family’
Danielle Crook (Morticia Addams): “I love the cast and crew of this production. Everyone is professional, talented and very fun to work with. I love the care and attention to detail the directors, choreographer and designers have put into every aspect of this show.”
Bridges: “[The audience] can expect some really funny moments and wonderful performances. I think my fellow actors, with the help of our director, choreographer and musical director, have kept true to the spirit of the Addams Family. I hope when they come to the show that, for some of us who watched the TV show, they will be reminded how funny it was. And for the younger audiences, if they are not as familiar with it, I hope they will enjoy it and that it will peak their interests to check out the show.”
Saucedo: “The audience can expect to have a wonderful time and be thoroughly entertained. This show is full of funny, truthful and sincere moments. They’re going to laugh and cry, and laugh some more.”
Bobby Marchessault (director): “You can expect to have a lot of fun and get some good laughs. Like the TV show many are familiar with, it is pretty light hearted and kooky, and it also has great underlying themes of love, family and acceptance. There is a lot of energy that comes pouring off the stage with great dancing from a cast of Addams ancestors who have returned from the dead to lend a hand to the story.”
On directing
Marchessault: “One challenge was creating our own unique versions of these characters which are so well-known and also have been represented in different ways through different mediums over the years. This was especially intriguing with the character of Wednesday. In this show she has grown up and fallen in love as a young woman, so we’ve played a lot with how she is the same as the little girl most of us think of in the family, yet who she has become as a result of being an Addams.
The other fun challenge in rehearsal has been adding all the little pieces of magic that create the Addams world.”
