Matt Byrne Media has won the rights to the hit musical 'The Addams Family', and recently underwent the process of auditioning for the South Australian cast.
The local premiere will hit stages in Adelaide's CBD and Northern suburbs in July.
The musical, like the multiple reincarnations on television and in films, is based on a group of fictional characters created by American cartoonist, Charles Addams. The characters are a satirical inversion of the ideal American family; an eccentric, wealthy clan who delight in the macabre and are unaware that people find them bizarre and frightening.
The musical, which is the first stage show based on the family and which takes its characters likenesses from the cartoons rather than the television series, was developed in 2007. With music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa and book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, the production was first produced by Elephant Eye Theatricals for Broadway in 2010.
Since then the show has toured throughout the US, parts of South America, Sydney Australia, Finland and Asia.
Byrne has completed his casting, who auditioned during an Adelaide heat wave, and will open the South Australian premiere on the 2nd of July 2014, at the Arts Theatre. Shortly thereafter the show will move out to the Shedley Theatre in Elizabeth, where it will run from the 17th to the 26th of July.
Paul Rodda
South Australian cast:
Gomez - Michael Coumi
Mortica - Emma Bargery
Wednesday - Sophie Hamilton
Lucas - Jonathon Shilling
Fester - Jamie Hornsby
Grandma - Chris Bussey
Lurch - Frank Cwertniak
Pugsley - Dylan Richardson
Alice - Fiona Aitken
Mal - James McCluskey-Garcia
Thing - Hans
Cousin Itt - :)
Female Ancestors
Sarah Williams
Roxie Giovannucci
Tahlia Fantone
Sarah Wildy
Alex Cornish
Emma Hamilton
Nadine Wood
Niki Yiannoullou
Male Ancestors
Gavin Cianci
Gus Smith
Riki DeJesus
Bobby Goudie
Ron Abelita
Gil Costas
Callum Byrne
Michael Williams
When: 2 to 12 July
Where: The Arts Theatre
When: 17 to 26 July
Where: The Shedley Theatre
If making it into an International Festival of Arts program is a big deal, then the Adelaide-based theatre company, Windmill, has hit it big, bigger, biggest. It has not one but three shows included in the 2014 Adelaide Festival program.
Wildest and bravest aspect of this is that the shows target the hardest of all theatre audiences - teens.
Windmill's artistic director Rosemary Myers credits Festival director David Sefton with the courage and, indeed, some of the impetus which has made this happen.
"David Sefton saw ‘School Dance’ when it premiered in Adelaide and when we said we saw it as part of a trilogy, he said 'do it'," she reports. Now, on the eve of the Festival, the third play of the set is finishing rehearsals and having its first runs. It is called ‘Girl Asleep’.
"We wanted the third instalment to be more of a girl's story," says Myers.
"It's more beautiful. It has a different dynamic to the others.
"But it is just as hilarious and inventive."
Already the first play in the set has been an award winner. Critical acclaim for ‘School Dance’ was followed by two Helpmann Awards and a Best Production for Young People gong at the Sydney Theatre Awards. ‘Fugitive’ was the next story to be told in the series which describe adolescent rites of passage.
Since she came to Windmill, director Rosemary Myers has shown that she does not shirk from the sensitive issues, the raw realities of growing up, and hence her productions can be quite confronting. Her ‘The Wizard of Oz’ was quite an eyebrow-raiser in 2009.
Hallmark of her shows in the older genre is that they may be loud, wild, movie-like and, most importantly, wickedly funny. They burst across genres, referencing pop culture and movies. They are not quite like any other theatre that is out there.
‘School Dance’ depicts young people in just that - the nerve-racking predicament of the school dance, the ‘who likes’ and ‘who doesn'ts’ and the fragile egos and edgy tempers.
It had and has a powerful and tight professional cast of Amber McMahon, Jonathon Oxlade, Luke Smiles and Matthew Whittet with Whittet also behind the writing, Oxlade on the design, Smiles on the soundtrack and Myers directing.
Those creatives turned out to be the stuff good chemistry is made from - and they have continued to work together to create the rest of the trilogy.
Myers sees the team refining its work as it progresses, getting bolder and learning from the responses of audiences just how far the company can go to bring this difficult teen demographic into the theatres.
‘Fugitive’, is darker than ‘School Dance’. It is futuristic, somewhere out there off the edge of a hip hopper world. It's a very lateral take on Robin Hood. Myers describes it as "Manga-esque", meaning it draws on the idiom of Japanese comics. For ‘School Dance’, on the other hand, she references the spirit of the John Hughes films of the 80s. He's the ‘Ferris Buella’ man, ‘National Lampoon’, ‘Breakfast Club’... Hence the plays have filmic elements as well as graphic ingredients - among the many things.
"We also have made them in different periods," says Myers.
"Fugitive is set in the 90s and School Dance in the 80s.
"This last one, ‘Sleeping Girl’, is 70s - flares and hotpants. Lots of costume changes, Lots of wigs. Shudders of excitement."
It might be a modern take on ‘Sleeping Beauty’ but, like the other plays, it leaps to unexpected heights.
"We do outrageous things on stage," laughs Myers.
"There are fantastical creations. For instance a paper crane turns into a Finnish penpal."
While it is all very well devising plays for teens, Windmill has been very conscious that theatre also is a family thing. Just as its plays for juniors, the likes of its last children's hit, ‘Grug’, must also have elements to engage the parents, with these plays directed at teens, it has nodded at adult interest.
"The plays are foremost for teens but there is so much fun and drama, so much popular culture that they draw in a wider audience," says Myers. "We play to a young audience but appeal to an old one as well."
School Dance
March 12 - 16
Space Theatre
Fugitive
March 1 - 9
Space Theatre
Girl Asleep
February 28 - March 1
Space Theatre
Bookings from Bass.net.au or 131 246
Samela Harris