The Worth County School reenacted the popular film and musical “The Addams Family” last weekend, treating everyone to some spooky fun. The plot revolves around the Addams Family reunion that involves everyone, including the dead ancestors who come back from the grave. If you’re an Addams, anything goes, but there is one ironclad rule — you never keep secrets from the rest of the family.
The family lives in a massive haunted house somewhere in New York City and the heads are Gomez Addams (Unique Brown) and Morticia Addams (Krista Monticue). They have a lovely daughter, Wednesday Addams (Arenna Galanakis), who loves killing birds and torturing her brother, Pugsley (Addison Gray).
The reunion starts when Uncle Fester (Emsley Spainhower) calls up the family’s ancestors (Heather Deardorff, Kenzie Dignan, Kaydence Downing, Laura Hansen, Breanna Ray, Haley Russell) from the grave. But a twist in this year’s reunion happens when a chance encounter between Wednesday and Lucas Beineke (Jarrett Gilland) leads to love at first sight.
Wednesday insists on bringing Lucas and his parents, Alice Beineke (Kylie Combs) and Mal Beineke (Mason Gray), to the reunion. Gomez and Morticia are so horrified that they talk of canceling the reunion for this year entirely, but they relent and agree on having a normal reunion.
Alice, Mal, and Lucas are the exact opposite of the Addams family. Alice, in particular, radiates warmth and light, always dresses in bright colors, and always sees the good in things. She doesn’t even mind the spooky household; “It’s New York and the rent must be so high, they can’t afford furniture,” she said. The Beinekes are not scared, even when they encounter the doorkeeper, Lurch (Memphis Ware), who cannot communicate like normal humans do and can only speak in growls like a werewolf. But they are the opposites of the Addams family in one respect; for all their warmth and light, they keep all sorts of secrets from each other.
The play gets even more chaotic than usual when Wednesday freaks out her parents when she dresses up in bright yellow to impress the Beinekes. And Wednesday is afraid to break the news to her mother that she is madly in love with Lucas because she is afraid of the kind of scene that her mother will make when she finds out. But when she tells Gomez and asks him to keep it a secret, the danger is that Gomez and Morticia’s own marriage will fall apart because he violated the cardinal rule of the family — no secrets allowed. It was bad enough that Morticia had to make all kinds of personal sacrifices for the good of the family, including giving up a beautiful trip to Paris to travel through the awful sewers there.
Not everybody in the Addams Family is happy with Wednesday being madly in love with Lucas. Pugsley, in particular, rather enjoyed the torture sessions that Wednesday put him through and there would be nobody to torture him anymore. The family has a grandmother (Evalyn Gilland), who Pugsley confides in a lot, and nobody can remember if she is Gomez’ mother or Morticia’s. The climax of the Addams Family Reunion every year is Confession Time. A special chalice is passed around, and everybody has to drink the potion and confess a secret that they had been keeping from the rest of the family. Grandma is a master of making potions, and one in particular makes anyone who drinks it become even more dark and chaotic than usual.
But when Pugsley steals grandma’s potion and laces the confession chalice with the black potion, the ever-curious Alice Beineke drinks it first, jumps up on the table, and declares her approval of Wednesday and Lucas being together, that she is crazier than anyone in the room, and that her marriage with Mal, who she sees as a shell of the person who she fell in love with, is over. Another twist is introduced when Uncle Fester announces that he is in love with the moon, which explains all the inordinate time he spends in the graveyard playing his ukelele and singing romantic songs when the moon is full.
The chaos that ensues tears things apart. Will Wednesday and Lucas survive their first fight? Will Morticia and Gomez’s marriage survive? Will Mal crawl out of his shell and save his marriage? Will Uncle Fester ever be able to meet the love of his live, even though she is more than 200,000 miles away? And will the ancestors ever be allowed to return to their graves, where they will be able to rest in peace for another year?
The Worth County Education Foundation and the Groom Family Endowment helped with putting the play together along with several other sponsors and helpers. They included Psalm 100 Ministries, Route 4 Farms, DBA Salvage Merchandise, the Wool Shop, Andover Community of Christ, Valerie and Jason Gray, Tammy Jones, Amber and Justin Walker, Monticue Construction, Worth County Care & Rehab, The Petaler, the Rose Theatre, Mission Possible, Alisha Sutton, and many parents and teachers.
The play was directed by Nanci Drury, assisted by Darin Drury. Caleb Smith was the music director. Sarah Smith put together the dinner theatre.
Without spoiling the plot, a final spooky twist ensued when two spooks in ski masks ran out onto the stage along with the actors who were taking their routine bows to the applause of the audience. They turned out to be Lucas Frisch and Andrew Griffin, the stage crew. Andrew broke out a back flip. Conner Pointer did the lights and Reyen Hansen did the spotlight.
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