Friday, 4 February 2022

THEATRE REVIEW: The Addams Family - The Alhambra Theatre, Bradford.



Still the creepiest and kookiest family we know, the Addams Family are back – and musical.

Andrew Lippa's modern music for the weird and wonderful of all ages is the perfect dose of family fun – for a bunch so dark it's hilariously light-hearted. The production follows everyone's favourite terrifying teenager Wednesday Addams as she grows up and falls in love with a 'normal' boy (much to her parents' dismay) and we get to enjoy the nuclear fallout from the family's first 'normal' friends to the consequences of their first ever secret.

Designer Diego Pitarch set the scene beautifully from the moment we laid eyes on the stage with some incredible sets – everything from ornate moving set pieces to tiny details such as moss detailing on the house's old bricks really upped the ante for the overall eerie effect that we're so used to with this iconic family. Even the large set pieces moved smoothly into place creating stunning transitions you barely even noticed were taking place and the attention to detail was remarkable. With most stage shows the suspension of disbelief only goes so far – you know you're sitting in a theatre, looking at a stage. But the ingenious combination of stunning set design, seamless transitions and the perfect amount and variation of lighting really made you feel like you were there; this was one of the most immersive front-on productions I've seen, simply from a design perspective. A particular stand out that really set the bar for the amount of precision put into creating the perfect vision was a 'picture frame' on the wall at the back of the stage – when in normal light it appeared as just a regular framed painting. However, once illuminated we could see various characters moving into place in the painting to watch scenes unfold, really adding to the haunted house effect that the Addams family are so well known for.

It was easy to tell from the offset that the show was going to be a blast; 'When You're An Addams' as the opening number was definitely a hit – an absolutely flawless ensemble number that's still stuck in my head the day after and makes me want to watch all over again.

Cameron Blakely's endlessly fun and slightly camp portrayal of Gomez Addams was remarkable – both laugh-out-loud funny and heart-warmingly sensitive, Blakely certainly knew how to work a crowd and had a voice just as captivating as his performance. He was an absolute showstopper – quite literally, after breaking from his lovely Latin-American accent during a rather suspenseful family dinner scene and delivering a line in a broad Yorkshire accent infront of everyone else on stage. (Ironic, really, as this really is the perfect show for corpsing.) Usually this would be a red mark against any theatre production – but his comedic timing couldn't have been more perfect and he had the entire audience (and half the cast) roaring with laughter.

As always, by his side, his wonderful wife Morticia - played by the incredible Joanna Clifton, who gave a spectacularly spooky performance as the infamous gothic matriarch we all know and love. The way she moved made her seem all the more ethereal (no surprise given Clifton's background) but their pasodoble is what really blew me away. Her hilarious rendition of 'Just Around The Corner' was laugh-out-loud funny, perfectly straddling the border between endearing and ever-so -lightly unhinged. The heads of the Addams family are well known for their everlasting love and their passion for one each other, and this particular number really encapsulated it. The choreography was beautiful throughout the whole show, but this number came out on top. The chemistry between the two was bordering on sickeningly believable; they did the perfect job of recreating one of the most beautiful (if slightly scary) romances in entertainment history.

Special mentions are definitely deserved for Kingsley Morton's emotional portrayal of Wednesday Addams – it's hard to play a teenage girl in love without overdoing it, but she managed to hit the sweet spot with this one. Each of her musical numbers was pitch perfect – Morton has a strong voice which paired beautifully with the rest of the ensemble as there wasn't a weak performance among them. Also deserving of more than his fair share of admiration was Scott Paige as the loveable Uncle Fester. An absolute laugh-riot throughout, if comedic relief was needed he would have been it - with giggles galore from start to finish it was hard to stand out, but stand out he did.

There isn't really a negative thing to say about the production as a whole – from the spot-on casting to the incredible live band adding the perfect eerie overtone to the whole affair, absolutely everything had been thought of. I went in not knowing what to expect, and came out desperate to see it again! If you're looking for something fun, visually spectacular and a little bit different, get booking – if it gets the reaction it deserves, then tickets won't be around for long.

Reviewer - Hazel Kaye
on - 2.2.22


No comments:

Post a Comment