The Addams Family was a hit at MHS

On Nov. 18 and 19, Milford High School had its annual Fall Musical. This year, the Milford Theatre Company performed “The Addams Family.¨

The plot mostly evolved around Wednesday Addams, played by senior Stephanie Herman, telling her family that she was getting married. 

At the beginning of the play, Wednesday asks her parents if she can invite a boy and his family over for dinner. It doesn’t take long for the problem to appear. Wednesday plans on getting married to the boy, Lucas Beineke, played by junior Jeremy Hogaboom and doesn’t know how to tell her parents.

She eventually tells her father, Gomez Addams, played by junior Cole Harvey, her little secret and begs him not to tell her mother, Morticia Addams, played by senior Julia Schwendenmann.

It takes some convincing, but Wednesday finally persuades Gomez into not telling Morticia, at least until the dinner is over. But when Gomez starts acting strangely, Morticia knows something is up.

When Uncle Fester, played by senior Nathan Davis, hears about this news, all he wants to do is help. So he calls up some dead ancestors to help keep them together. Soon after that, it’s time for Lucas and his family to come over for dinner.

His mother, Alice Beineke, played by junior Hailey Eriksen, and father, Mal Beineke, played by junior Alex Lane are totally caught off guard when they meet the Addam, but they stay for dinner anyways.

During dinner, Morticia decides they all need to play “The Game.¨ To play “The Game,¨ whose ever turn it is must confess something. The game obviously causes problems and Wednesday and Lucas´s marriage secret comes out. Morticia is more upset that Gomez didn’t tell her about it.

Then, Lucas and Wednesday get in fight because their lives are just too different and call off the marriage. Lucas soon realizes that he really does want to be with Wednesday. To prove it, he lets her shoot an apple of his head with a bow and arrow.

Gomez tries to make up with Morticia, by apologizing with a Tango dance, she of course forgives him.

The play then concludes with Lucas and Wednesday happily getting married, and a loud applause from the audience.

After many long hours of preparation for this performance, it clearly paid off. The actors and actresses really got into their roles and made them come to life. From the costumes, to the makeup, to the stage set up, everything looked phenomenal.

Nathan Davis, was so committed to his character, he shaved all of his hair off.

“I had the option to wear a bald cap, but I thought it’d be kind of cool to shave my head. I also thought it would make it more believable,” said Davis.

But luckily for the other actors and actresses, their characters had wigs. Stephanie Herman said that there was whole separate room dedicated just to wigs.

The long hours of rehearsal really showed up during the play too.

Julia Schwendenmann explains that in the first month of preparing for the play rehearsal time for the week could reach nine hours. But then when they started doing run throughs in the beginning of October,  rehearsal hours can reach up to 16 per week. By the end of October rehearsal hours for the week reached up to 20 hours.

She then revealed that the last week of the play she had spent 48 hours getting ready and perfecting the last little details.

It was no doubt that hard work and dedication had been put into this show. But not only were did the students become family on stage, but they’re family off stage too.

“There’s not a single person (in the play) that won’t talk to you, won’t spend time with you, or doesn’t want to get to know you. Having those close relationships made doing the play even more fun,” said Schwendenmann.  

Overall, the play was huge success. It even got a standing ovation at the end of the Friday night show. The hard work that the students put in was obvious and it was definitely worth seeing.