Cabrillo Playhouse opens its 2026-27 season October 2 with The Addams Family, bringing one of America’s most delightfully macabre families to the stage for a five-week run perfectly timed for the Halloween season.
Based on the famously creepy and kooky characters created by Charles Addams, the musical features a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice and music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa. The story begins when Wednesday Addams has grown up and fallen in love with Lucas Beineke, a young man from a decidedly more conventional family.
Wednesday confides in her father, Gomez, and asks him to keep the relationship a secret from Morticia. For a man hopelessly devoted to his wife, keeping anything from her proves difficult. When the Addamses invite Lucas and his parents to dinner, secrets emerge, relationships are tested and two very different families discover that “normal” may be a matter of perspective.
Bringing the story to Cabrillo is a creative team with plenty of shared history. Producing Artistic Director Michael Lopez directs, joined by choreographer Joanna Tsang-Segelson and musical director Marc Marger. Marger was part of Lopez’s Company earlier this year, while Tsang-Segelson choreographed his productions of Grease and The Rocky Horror Show.
Leading the Addams household are Patrick Brannelly as Gomez and Juliet Fischer as Morticia.
Brannelly makes his Southern California theater debut at Cabrillo after performing roles ranging from Salieri in Amadeus to Donkey in Shrek and the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. His background also includes improv, sketch and stand-up comedy.
Fischer returns to Cabrillo after appearing as Joanne in last season’s Company. A former Radio City Music Hall Rockette, her extensive career includes Broadway’s On the Town and national tours of Chicago and Kiss Me Kate, as well as numerous Southern California stage appearances.
For all its ghosts, graveyards and gallows humor, The Addams Family ultimately has something very human at its center: children growing up, parents learning to let go and a marriage confronting what happens when one partner keeps a secret from the other.
The Addams Family runs October 2 through November 1 at Cabrillo Playhouse, 202 Avenida Cabrillo in San Clemente. Tickets and performance information are available at CabrilloPlayhouse.org.