The Addams Family mansion is as much a character as Gomez or Morticia. It’s a crumbling, Gothic fortress steeped in history and shadow, yet somehow filled with love. This presents a unique challenge for theatrical design: how do you capture that specific blend of the spooky and the sentimental with a flat backdrop?
In this blog post, we’re peeling back the cobwebs to look at some fantastic options for bringing the Addams’ gloriously morbid home to your stage production.
The Addams Family Backstory
While you may see a family and a home all wrapped in a macabre, gothic, and dark-humored aesthetics, the Addams Family cherishes unconventionality, deep affection for one another, and unwavering support that defies traditional societal norms while maintaining a strong, close-knit family unit.
The evolution of the Addams Family story is interesting and long. The story originated as a series of cartoons by Charles Addams in The New Yorker starting in 1938. Originally unnamed, they were designed as a satirical, wealthy, and loving inversion of the typical suburban family, delighting in the macabre, gothic, and grotesque. In the 1960s, the show was a popular live-action television series. In the 1990s, it was a popular live-action film featuring Raúl Julia and Anjelica Huston. The Addams Family musical opened on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on April 8, 2010, and successfully ran for 722 performances and 34 previews, closing on December 31, 2011. The musical comedy offers music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa. Presently, the family can be found on popular Netflix series such as Wednesday.
The theatrical production follows the main characters in the Addams clan, including Gomez, Morticia, Wednesday, Pugsley, Uncle Fester, and Grandma. They live in a spooky and moody mansion with a disembodied hand (Thing) and a butler (Lurch). They are blissfully unaware of how scary and different they seem to the rest of the living world.
The story follows the family’s 18-year-old daughter, Wednesday, who is ready to lead a life of her own. She has fallen in love with Lucas Beineke, a sweet, smart boy from a normal, respectable Ohio family. She has invited his family to dinner, which leads to one fateful, hilarious night, where secrets are disclosed, relationships are tested, and the Addams family must face up to the one horrible thing they’ve managed to avoid for generations: change.
The Addams Family Home
To create the Addams Family home on your stage, consider some of these options for both the exterior or interior scenes.
This Haunted House Backdrop features a spooky house exterior at night, with dim moonlight, gnarled tree silhouettes, and a wrought-iron fence.
This Mansion at Night Backdrop depicts the exterior of a mansion, with nighttime tones that enhance its macabre appearance.
For the formal, “not of this century,” aesthetics of the Addams’ Family home, this Victorian Interior Backdrop features a living room interior with a center fireplace, bookshelves and windows left and right.
Spooky Skies, Woods & Graves
As an alternative to the family home for scenes throughout the production, these options that include moonlit skies, mysterious woods and graveyards would be ideal.
This Graveyard Backdrop features rows of headstones under overgrown, dangling-branched trees.
For a nighttime view of a graveyard, this Graveyard Backdrop offers a creepy view where the moon is translucent, but the hills, gravestones and trees are opaque.
This Moonlight Serenade Backdrop offers a view of the night sky, with stars, the moon, and cloud cover.
This Spider Forest Backdrop features a creepy forest with a large spider web and gnarled trees.
From the grand, decaying opulence of the family mansion to the chilling beauty of the moonlit graveyard, the backdrops you choose will define the world of The Addams Family for your audience. A successful design perfectly balances the spooky and the sweet, setting the stage for every hilarious disaster and heartfelt confession. Ready to find the perfect setting for Gomez, Morticia, and the entire ghoulish clan? Explore the nearly thirty unique backdrops available for your Addams Family production at Backdrops by Charles H Stewart today and bring your gloriously morbid vision to life.