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| MCHS musical breaks away from the classics with modern production |
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4/20/2018
By Brianna Stephens
Advocate Staff writer
Breaking away from the classic musicals, Montgomery County High School students are challenged this year with performing the unique characters of a modern production.
“The Addams Family,” serving as the 32nd Dr. Robert Haynes Spring Musical, features the well-known characters from the TV series and films of the same name.
The performance will be at 7 p.m., Friday, April 20, and Saturday, April 21, and at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, April 22, in the MCHS auditorium. Tickets will be sold at the door and are $10 for adults and $8 for students.
Parents Gomez and Morticia Addams have raised their macabre family by the same values for many years. At 18 years old, their daughter, Wednesday, decides she wants a new life for herself and falls in love with a “normal” boy, Lucas Beineke, with a “normal” family from Ohio.
“Wednesday wants a normal family because she’s fallen in love with a normal boy,”Kim Barnes, spring musical director/producer, said.
After the families meet for dinner, they realize the Beineke family isn’t any more normal than the Addamses, she added.
Spring productions at the high school have always featured classics, but “The Addams Family” has been considered in the past, vocal director Ashley Tyree said.
After looking into it more, Barnes realized the show’s humor and the appeal it could have to her students.
“This is a really good family musical,” Karisma Keeton, a senior playing Wednesday Addams, said. “I think this is something that everyone could find humor in because it is a funny show ... It’s a story everyone can put themselves into and find something they love about it.”
Several of the cast members realize this year’s production is unlike anything the school has ever done before.
“I think it’s a breath of fresh air that everybody needs in their life,” Allen Reed, a junior playing Gomez Addams, Wednesday’s father, said. “This would help everybody take a seat, take a second to lean back and enjoy a real good comedy that has family values and would help someone reconnect with themselves, their families, their friends, anybody.”
With a more modern production, students face the challenge of playing the unique and iconic characters.
For Keeton, portraying a dark character like Wednesday isn’t something she is familiar with.
“It’s challenging because usually in musicals I play really upbeat, even ditsy characters and this is a complete turn around,” Keeton said. “It took me so long to really put myself in that character and understand it. There’s no other character like her.”
Wednesday’s seemingly normal love interest doesn’t make her character any easier.
“She is a dark person, but she’s fallen in love with your average boy next door,” Keeton said. “She has to fight between this really dark side of her and this side that’s changing ... It’s the battle between the two personalities.”
Keeton added Wednesday’s internal conflicts help make her relatable to the audience and makes her a resonating character.
Reed experienced the same challenges while playing Gomez. He added playing him is “an extreme roller coaster” compared to the stern character he played in last year’s production.
“It’s a lot more than I expected,” Reed said.
Reed described Gomez as a man who is proud of his family and cares more for his family’s happiness than his own.
Gomez is also always eager to show his affection for his wife, Morticia, played by senior Tristina Salmon.
Morticia is a stern mother, but she’s also very elegant and doll-like, Salmon said.
Playing Morticia was challenging, she said, because she had to deepen her voice and change her mannerisms to embody the family matriarch.
Skylar Holley said playing Lucas Beineke, Wednesday’s love interest, was easy since he was normal compared to the Addamses, but is challenging after he undergoes a personal transformation during the production.
That transformation reflects the production’s theme of being comfortable with your true self, Holley said.
“At the start he appears to be a normal, average boy,” Holley said. “But after he interacts with the rest of the Addams family, it becomes clear he’s not. He’s just like Wednesday Addams.”
Juniors Peyton Garrison and James Williamson play Lucas’ parents, Alice and Mal Beineke. For Holley and Williamson, this is the second year they have played a father and son match.
Williamson described Mal as “a very stiff character who, once he loosens up, is very awkwardly loose,” while Garrison described Alice as “weird” being a poet who rhymes all of her sentences.
Although the Beinekes’ relationship could be described as “strained” by the cast, Holley, Williamson and Garrison said their close friendships make it easy to embrace the difficulties of their characters together.
Freshman Nate Brother, playing Pugsley Addams, and senior Micah Ledford, playing Grandma Addams, said their characters were sinister and even eccentric, but learning to play such characters is a valued experience.
“It’s been really fun, but it’s been difficult,” Ledford said. “It’s such an eccentric character that it can be hard to pull it off, but I’ve been working hard to pull it off.”
Sophomore Marvin Montague finds ease in playing Lurch, a tall butler for the Addams family that is practically mute.
Montague said this is the first production he has been in and added he sees himself in Lurch because he too is tall, quiet and out of the way.
For his performance, Montague said he has to wear 6 inch platform shoes and doesn’t say much until he sings a solo at the end, something he has been working hard on.
Tyree said students participating in this year’s production have grown a great deal in their talents. Some who were afraid to walk on stage now embrace their characters and aren’t afraid to “act silly,” he added.
The students are not only strong academically, but also dedicate several hours to their music and know their perf
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