Photo: Ken Coleman
FORGET ‘The Addams Family’ films you have seen, advises Brian Henry, playing Gomez in the current comedy production. “They all took place while the family was growing up. ‘The Addams Family’ we have by Cecilian Musical Society was staged first in Broadway 2009 and 2010 with Nathan Lane as Gomez and Bebe Neuwirth as Morticia.
“Then it was taken off and new music added to the score. The script is comedy gold”.
The Cecilians were thrilled to get hold of copyright as it’s a show never done before in Munster. Take your seat, ladies, gentlemen and ghoulish souls, at Lime Tree Theatre until Saturday 28, 8pm.
Curtains go up on a new storyline with Wednesday (Isabelle Olsthoorn, “a great actress and a great singer”) having come of age and becoming engaged to a nice boy from Ohio, Lucas Beineke (Jamie Sheehan).
“She gets engaged without disclosing it,” admits her stage Dad. “Gomez is asked to keep the secret. All the action takes place over one night in their family mansion house, which is in Central Park, New York and within a graveyard”.
Photo: Ken Coleman
He admits that “the Beinekes have baggage of their own but put them beside the Addams family, and look, they are normal”.
Brian Henry, with CMS for two decades+ and this year’s president, loves his Gomez. “He’s great fun and there is an awful lot of comedy to his part. Gomez’ storyline is driven by two relationships, one with his wife Morticia (Gillian Hunt) whom he adores and treasures the ground she walks on, and the other with his daughter Wednesday, whom he loves”.
Pause, and a grin: “Gomez is not a complex man, he wears his heart on his sleeve. The part is ‘a big song’ with a lot of solo numbers’.
There’s an emphasis on visual comedy which children will love, fabulously convincing costumes and inventive backdrops achieved with new investment. Anticipate chorus numbers – all of them by Addams ancestors – choreographed by AIMS winning Barbra Meany, working with her AIMS awarded partner, director Des Henn.
A full moon shines over this luminous mystery and love. Book a seat on www.limetreetheatre.ie
