Daily Dose — Addams Family Musical Ready To Hit the Stage
By Ari Lord
Black Productions is excited to be staging The Addams Family: A New Musical at Nelson’s Capitol Theatre May 25-28th.
Tickets are on sale now.
Sydney Black is co-founder of Black Productions, a company that has worked since 2013 to provide the Kootenays with high-quality theatrical presentations of famous works.
The Addams Family: A New Musical is Black Production’s first full-scale musical coming to the Capitol Theatre since 2019.
The Addams Family is a darkly funny show that embraces the wackiness in every family, featuring an original story that is every parent’s nightmare: Wednesday Addams, the ultimate princess of darkness, has grown up and wants to marry a sweet, intelligent young man from a respectable family — a man her parents have never met.
Wednesday confides in her father and begs him not to tell her mother. Gomez Addams does something he’s never done: keep a secret from his beloved wife, Morticia. Everything changes for the whole family on the fateful night that they host a dinner for Wednesday’s “normal” boyfriend and his parents.
Black Productions decided to go with something comical (albeit macabre) after the hard pandemic years.
“Last August, we decided on this because it has a nice broad cast, a chorus, and lots of roles. And then in September, the show Wednesday came out. It exploded everywhere. We just happened by chance to ride on the coattails of this amazing phenomenon,” says Black.
The Addams Family is a fictional family created by American cartoonist Charles Addams.
They originally appeared in a series of 150 unrelated single-panel comics, about half of which were originally published in The New Yorker between 1938 and their creator’s death in 1988. The Addams Family was made into many film and television variations ever since, most recently, Wednesday.
The cast of the production is replete with talent, and backed up by a crew of 25 people.
“It’s a full, amazingly well-oiled team after ten years,” says Black of the crew. “We have some old faces that you will know from our past productions, but we also have some wonderful new humans in the lead and supporting roles. Our Wednesday is Madeline Setzer, and she graduated from the music school here. She walked in, and she blew our socks off.”
Black says that audiences can look forward to an incredible show when it comes to music.
“It has amazing music, which is something I didn’t expect. Musically, it’s so interestingly written and much more challenging than I gave it credit for. The music is incredible.”
At the show’s helm are some people well acquainted with Nelson’s theatre scene.
“It’s Lindsay Clague’s first time directing for us, which is exciting. She’s performed twice as an actor for us before. This is her first large show as director. And our resident choreographer, the brilliant Mackenzie Hope is part of what makes it so special every time. And we have a new musical director, Malaika Horswill. We really lucked out,” says Black.
Black says the show is family-friendly, but offers a note on that.
“It centres on themes of death, so people can prepare emotionally for that—trigger warnings for humans who might be feeling sensitive. Please bring your children; however, if you’re going to bring children under the age of eight, I recommend checking out Youtube videos of the Broadway production to ensure that kids won’t be scared. There are no jump scares, but there are ghosts in the cast,” says Black.
Audience members, especially children, are welcome to meet the cast afterwards, at the matinees on the 27th and 28th at 2 pm, after the show.
“We’ll come out afterwards and take pictures with kids and any attendees. We’re going to have a little soda booth area set up,” says Black.
Tickets are $35 for adults or $30 for children under 12 (plus taxes and fees) and are available at the Capitol Theatre box office by calling 250-352-6363 or going to Capitol Theatre Box Office.
