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High School Stages The Addams Family, with Support from Community

Old Saybrook High School (OSHS) Music and Drama Departments completed a three-night run of The Addams Family, the musical first performed on Broadway in April 2010, with music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa. The show focuses on a ghoulish American family with an affinity for all things macabre, but this quirky family still has to deal with many of the same challenges faced by every other family, including the most ominous challenge of all: the Addams kids are growing up.

While Gomez Addams (played by OSHS junior Chris Thomson) and his wife Morticia (senior Jillian Hirst), the patriarch and matriarch of the family, are happily stuck in the traditions that the family has embraced for hundreds of years, their beloved daughter Wednesday (senior Natalie Staples) has fallen in love with Lucas Beineke (junior Kunsang Dorjee), who comes from a normal, respectable family—from Ohio!

Things come to a head when Wednesday invites Lucas and his parents Mal (senior Kiwon-Paul Dionne-Jee) and Alice (sophomore Madeline Bradley) to the Addams family home for dinner to announce their engagement. Wednesday is desperate for the evening to go well, and pleads with her brother Pugsley (junior Gabriel Castro), Grandma (freshman Penny Amara) and Uncle Fester (sophomore Quincey Vlad) to be as normal as possible. As the Beinekes are greeted at the door by Lurch (sophomore John Gabelmann), they get a sense that things are far from normal. In this one, fateful night, secrets are disclosed, relationships tested, and the Addams family have to face up to the one terrible thing they have managed to avoid for generations: change.

Director Elise Murphy Mulligan and Musical Director Jeremy Milton (together with Assistant Musical Director and accompanist Jake Troy) started working with a cast and crew of more than 100 students in January to put together a production that included polished ensemble acting and singing. The show also included several dance numbers, choreographed by Jena Audette, and costumes designed by Tracy James. Sophomore Breydan Medbury stage managed the production. Musical accompaniment under the direction of Jeremy Milton was provided by an orchestra made up of members of the shoreline musical community, including high school students Billy Sheahan (junior) and Georgia Sylvester (sophomore).

“It has been a privilege and pleasure working with all of these very talented and dedicated artists, actors and professionals at Old Saybrook High School,” said Murphy Mulligan, “this show, cast and crew has moved and inspired me.”

This was the 57th musical that Old Saybrook High School has produced since 1963. As ever, cast and crew are grateful for the support of the School’s administration, and also to local businesses and the community who generously supported this production.