'Addams Family' more a hoot than howl

Timing is everything. “The Addams Family” opened last week, a perfect fit for Halloween. It runs through Nov. 17 at the Whidbey Playhouse.

Elders of a certain age will recognize the characters, their dress, mannerisms, voices, personalities and tell-tale musical score. Director Stan Thomas is picture perfect in conjuring up the 1964 TV show based on Charles Addams mid-century New Yorker cartoons.

Turned into a musical in 2010, Thomas, producer Andrew Pierzchala, the costumers, production team and cast bring this 21sr century version to Oak Harbor, complete with subtle political zingers, such as Gomez, pulled between wife and daughter, observing, “I am trapped, like the moderate right.”

This is as much a cartoon as a comedy brought to life, all caricature in homage to the original.

Bailey Wend as Morticia is perfect from black hair to Transylvanian accent to her posturing of arms and hands – just like on TV. Husband Gomez (Fernando Duran) is her match in every way, down to his costume, and his character’s mannerisms, his left hand in dinner jacket.

Gomez shares emceeing duties, of a sort with a perfectly made up Fester (Matt Montoya, light on his feet; also assistant director). While Gomez is ring master for his immediate family, Fester directs generations of dead relatives, all whom met untimely deaths. The overwhelming female ensemble wear floor length white gowns, white wigs and are powdered up like 17th century French royalty.

The ancestors have come into our world for a night but are stuck here until the family solves the dilemma of teenage daughter Wednesday (Gabby Eaton, all in black, with white striped socks) wanting to marry Lucas Beineke (Max Hanesworth, couldn’t be better as a clean cut young man from Ohio).

Wednesday has invited Lucas and his parents to dinner and enlists her father’s support against Morticia’s firm resistance. Gomez has to choose.

The oddest thing about the Addams family: they tell the truth. They prefer death to life and blood and gore to sweetness and light, but they don’t lie. Now, stuck with normal Ohioans, the buttoned up father Mal (Tony Pooler) and wife Ruth (Dianna Gruenwald), the Addams have to act normal. Wednesday sings “One Normal Night,” as does Lucas, for his family is not normal, either.

All this must be great fun for the cast. Except for playing zombies, what can be better than to be long dead ancestors, across the centuries, in wigs and gowns singing in ensemble and performing simple dance numbers together? And, they get to have scars and stitches on their faces. This is the essence of community theatre that Whidbey Playhouse does so well.

Mention must be made of pre-teen brother Pugsley Addams (Laurianna Newcomb, yes, a girl), Grandma (Geri Thomas), Lurch (Ron Wilhelm) and Cousin Itt (Sabrina Cray), who never says a word but makes her presence known.

Suffice it to say the Beinekes stay for dinner, are subjected to the family truth telling game of “Full Disclosure,” also a song, and the plot goes awry when a truth telling potion is drunk by Ruth, not Wednesday.

Will Wednesday and Lucas mate? Can Gomez get out of Morticia’s doghouse? Will the Beineke parents survive the night?

And what’s not to like about a death defying, Goth dressing family that is stuck on truth and love?

How do musical comedies typically turn out?

Go see for yourself. For tickets and times, Thursdays-Sundays: 360-679-2237, whidbeyplayhouse.com/.