The Addams Family – Curve Leicester

Ricardo Afonso and Alexandra Burke in The Addams Family at Curve Leicester and Touring. Picture: Pamela Raith

The Addams Family was reviewed at Curve Leicester where it runs until 10 August 2025. The tour continues until 30 August 2025.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

First seen in cartoon format way back in the late 1930s, The Addams Family do “creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky” like no one else, conquering TV in the ’60s, film in the ’90s, and of course, the now almost-compulsory stage musical.

Subverting the idea of the typical American family on its head and creating the macabre from the mundane, the ghoulish group have always been fascinating in whatever guise they’re in. The stage musical didn’t arrive until 2010, with Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth, and the show went on to have a couple of UK tours. The ghastly gang are back to entertain in their own special way this summer at Curve, where a new production has started clicking its fingers this week.

Gomez (played by Ricardo Afonso) and Morticia (Alexandra Burke) remain darkly enraptured in their marital unhappiness, living alongside Gomez’s brother Fester (Clive Rowe), son Pugsley (Nicholas McLean), butler Lurch (Dickon Gough) and Grandma (Lesley Joseph), although they’re not entirely sure whose mother she actually is.

Daughter Wednesday (Lauren Jones) has developed feelings for “normal boy” Lucas (Jacob Fowler), and doesn’t know how to handle this new state of positivity that she finds herself in. When marriage is suggested, Wednesday realises the two sets of parents haven’t met, so suggests that Lucas’ parents (Kara Lane and Dale Rapley) come to the Addams’ home for “one normal night”, which nobody in attendance is actually able to pull off.

As characters, The Addams Family are fundamentally fascinating, and seem the perfect fit for a stage adaptation, but the finished product never quite comes together. Not quite dark enough, nor funny enough, nor musically strong enough, it’s an uneasy mix that feels more of an early draft than an established show. The Addams’ humour comes from their twisted take on suburban norms, but this don’t get enough exploration in the book (Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice), which instead focuses too much on the teenage romance plot and squabbles between Gomez and Morticia rather than exploring these wonderfully fascinating characters properly.

Some are hugely under-utilised, with Joseph’s Grandma getting only a handful of minutes of material to work with, and Rowe saddled with a bizarre subplot about Fester falling in love with the moon. Composer Andrew Lippa has a decent body of work behind him, but not a great deal of it is hugely tuneful, and the same applies to his score here. Too many of the songs get ‘lost in the darkness’ and make little impression, with only Wednesday’s big numbers ‘Pulled’ and ‘Crazier Than You’ standing out. Morticia and Gomez both deserve one great solo, and they both get two average ones (although performed well).

While the material itself isn’t great, the production at least delivers it well, and probably the best it can be done. Director Matthew White captures the gothic tone perfectly, Diego Pitarch’s design is spot-on, matched by Ben Cracknell’s haunting lighting design, and an undead ensemble brings Alistair David’s choreography to ‘un-life’.

The cast too give mostly strong performances and work well with what they have. Afonso is the perfect Gomez, arguably the best portrayal since the late Raul Julia on screen back in the 1990s, and cannot conceivably be bettered. It’s just a shame he doesn’t have some stronger songs to put that incredible voice to better use.

Jones also cements her name as a new leading talent as Wednesday, delivering a powerful voice along with some perfect teenage snark and attitude. Joseph and Rowe are brilliant and show what remarkable actors they are, that they can do so much with so little material.

Burke is less successful as Morticia, but through no real fault of her own; the role just doesn’t naturally suit her. Morticia is such a precise style and tone, ice-cold and precise, and Burke naturally leans more towards breathy sensuality and her soulful voice can’t help but creep in. We know what a phenomenal vocalist Burke is, but with Morticia given relatively little to sing, the casting unfortunately exposes some limitations in terms of her stage aging and the roles that she’s best suited for. Burke does however compensate this with a brilliant tango routine performed with Afonso, showing the skill that made her a Strictly finalist and dancing up an absolute storm.

Firmly in the ‘good rather than great’ camp of musicals, The Addams Family looks great but a weak score and thin plot don’t do its iconic characters justice, and it struggles to explore what it is that makes their popularity live on. Some fantastic performances make it definitely worth a watch, it just should be much more of a scream.

Rob Bartley