Addams Family

I'm doing my best to catch up on blogging, but as it usually goes I will probably blog regularly for a week or two and then neglect my blog for months at a time.


Just like my potted plant...well the one that's still alive (hence why I don't have kids, or pets).


This past summer I costumed the Addams Family: The Musical. The story is that Wednesday has grown up and fallen in love with a normal boy. He and his parents are coming over for dinner and she is trying to get her family to act normal - it's actually almost the exact same plot as La Cage Aux Folles except with Goths and ghosts instead of Drag Queens.

In the story Uncle Fester (who in the musical is a lot more of a romantic) enlists the families ancestors to help Wednesday out. So in addition to all the regular characters that you know and love (Gomez, Morticia, Lurch, Pugsley, Grandma) there's a chorus of ghosts each from a different time period. That was the part that I had the most fun with.

Fortunately most the family each had only one main costume. I bought Gomez a striped, double breasted suit. Lurch got an ill-fitting suit. Puglsey had a striped T-shirt. Grandma was just a bunch of raggedy stuff from storage. Morticia's dress was the most challenging. I was trying to follow the costumes from the Broadway version which has her in a tight-fitting (of course), low-cut (well duh), purple and black print (slightly unexpected but it totally worked!)

I couldn't find the exact fabric so I just used a purple and black damask. I was hoping for a stretch fabric to make it easier to fit, but alas no such luck. I ended up adding in panels of stretch fabric on the sides because otherwise she couldn't sit down. The best part about the costume was during the end of the show she and Gomez make up over a tango and she opens up a slit on the dress and makes it into a short skirt for dancing. It was quite the awesome surprise.

Back to the ancestors. I had grand plans that were torn asunder due to lack of men (isn't that just how it always goes in the theater). We were supposed to have an even number of men and women, but it just didn't work out. So we had 4 men and 8 women.


My favorites were the conquistador (which I made from a historical pattern - so not easy) and the saloon girl. I had to sew a lot of the ancestors since they all had to be in white (I also did the makeup design). I could not find an all white flapper dress so I had to buy a basic dress and add fringe.

There's also a random number where Fester sings a love song to the moon (Fester is in love with the moon, go figure) and he serenades her with the help of the female ancestor while they are all wearing vintage bathing suits.


The costumes were fun to make, but overall the show was a lot more work, and the work was a lot more taxing than I had anticipated. So, I'm hoping to take somewhat of a sabbatical from costuming large shows for awhile. Not sure how long it will last since I'm kind of a push over, but I'm definitely not jumping at it yet.