Fox Chapel Area High School students staging 'The Addams Family'

From March 13-16, Fox Chapel Area High School students will bring to life a favorite creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky family with their spring musical.

“The Addams Family” premiered on Broadway in 2010, starring Nahan Lane as Gomez Addams and Bebe Neuwirth as Morticia Addams. After its successful run and national tours, the show became a popular choice for high schools all over the country. Benjamin Murray, director and producer of the musical at Fox Chapel Area High School, said that a lot of thought went into choosing this musical.

“For our high school shows, we always want to choose a show that features a large cast. We feel that we have a lot of fantastic students and we always want to have them be featured. We also want to find a musical that has a full pit orchestra. We’re very proud of our music program and want those students to be involved with the show as well,” Murray said.

With a cast, crew and orchestra of about 140 students, “The Addams Family” has certainly achieved the goal of bringing together as many of the school’s talented students as possible.

But Murray said the musical’s heart is also ideal for a high school cast.

“There’s nothing that has a better theme. It’s really about embracing who you are and demonstrating love in your life, that was a really important thing for us as we were looking at the show,” he said.

In “The Addams Family,” Gomez and Morticia’s spooky daughter Wednesday reveals she is in love with a “normal” man named Lucas Beineke. She wants to bring him home — to her family’s Gothic manse in Central Park — for dinner, along with his parents. Will heads roll once the unusual Addamses encounter the strangely not-strange Beinekes?

“(Wednesday) wants for her experience to be normal, which I think is a very normal thing for a lot of high school kids, to not want to be embarrassed by their families,” Murray said.

When the two families are thrown together, the audience gets to witness many revelations, arguments and reconciliations, all soundtracked with a score by composer and lyricist Andrew Lippa.

“It has great music, it’s kind of pop-centered,” Murray said.

With a cast of more than 65 students and plenty of visual magic to whip up, the musical requires a little bit of help from the school’s whole community. Murray is thrilled with how collaborative the effort has been so far.

“We have an incredible team — both an adult production team and a student production team — that as soon as we announced the show, started working on this. As far as costuming is concerned, we have an adult production leader who leads that, but this year, she has like six students and they’ve actually done a lot of the work,” he said.

Additionally, the high school’s art and technical education classes have played a large role in designing and building sets for the production. “It’s definitely a school-wide effort,” Murray said. “The technical aspect becomes easier when there’s all of those hands helping.”

It’s already been a long journey; casting took place in November, rehearsal began Jan. 2, and everything is finally coming together for the show’s premiere in mid-March.

The students who will be onstage during “The Addams Family” are enjoying the process of watching the show take shape — and they appreciate how much input they have.

“Rehearsals are fun, I think they’re very student-led. We have our directors, they tell us what they want to see and then it’s up to us to decide how we get to that point. They make it so that everything can run smoothly, but it’s really up to the students to come up with what we think will work and what we’d like to do,” said Nathan Johnson, 16, a junior who will play Gomez Addams in the show.

Johnson also has to play around with an accent for his role, and he said that repetition is key to not overdoing it.

“It’s about finding that balance and just being able to do it over and over and over again so I can just do it and don’t have to think about the accent,” he said.

Senior Ava Condron, 18, plays Alice Beineke, the mother of Wednesday’s love interest. She said that the company is really coming together, and it started with the core group getting into their characters.

“All the leads, we did really fun chemistry reads and we did this thing where we would spend 30 minutes talking to each other in character, getting really immersive with the experience,” she said.

Murray said that the students have stepped up and started taking the reins as opening night nears.

“What has impressed me in the last couple of weeks is that there are students who are taking on the leadership roles, feeling as if they need to do what they have to do to put on a good production. There’s a lot of buy-in for them wanting to do good because they care about what they’re doing. It’s not just your lead characters, but some of the ensemble kids pulling themselves out into the hallway to practice a dance move, the costume kids coming in early to make sure that something looks good. It’s all of those aspects,” he said.

Eighteen-year-old senior Alex Navas, who is playing Morticia Addams, agreed. “It’s going great. All of our stage managers are super helpful, they’re always there giving us everything we need. I think that’s the best part of our rehearsal process; even if our directors aren’t close or nearby, everything is very student-run,” she said.

Senior stage manager Madeleine Jones, 18, will be in the light booth coordinating with the other stage managers to make sure that the show runs smoothly. She said that she never realized how much goes into a successful show until she started working behind the scenes as a sophomore.

With the wider view of the show, she’s feeling great about how well “The Addams Family” is coming together.

“I am so excited about how the show is going. The cast has been so great and it’s going to be so good. I’m so excited for everyone to see it,” she said.

Fox Chapel Area High School will present musical “The Addams Family” from March 13-16. A special senior citizen dress rehearsal performance will take place at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 11, for any community members aged 60 or older. To make reservations for the senior citizen rehearsal performance, call 412-967-2410. For tickets to other performances, visit fcahsmusicdepartment.ludus.com.