The trouble with actors, as “The Shark Is Broken” gleefully suggests, is that they do not necessarily stop performing when the camera does. The trouble with the Addams family is that they cannot quite manage to behave when company comes over. Both problems will be on display this week at the Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts.
Recent flooding in Pagosa Springs has disrupted far more than the local theater calendar. Among the changes is the postponed finale of Thingamajig Theatre Company’s teen production of “The Addams Family Young@Part.”
Originally scheduled for Nov. 1, the performance has been rescheduled for Saturday, Nov. 7, at 3 p.m. It is a small adjustment in the context of a much larger community emergency, but an important one for the young cast, who now have the chance to take their final bows together.
The story begins with a secret, which is rarely a promising foundation for family harmony. Wednesday Addams (Olive Fladwood) has fallen in love with Lucas Beineke, a boy whose family is alarmingly normal. She asks her father, Gomez (Finlay Moore), not to tell her mother, Morticia (Leela Simpson). Gomez, whose devotion to Morticia is practically a full-time occupation, must attempt the unfamiliar art of deceiving his wife. Then Lucas and his parents arrive for dinner.
The jokes come dressed in black, but the questions beneath them are recognizably human. What happens when a child grows up into someone her parents did not quite anticipate? And who, exactly, gets to decide what a normal family looks like? Thingamajig’s young cast has a fine assortment of eccentrics to work with, but the show’s affection for its characters is what makes the mischief stick.
There is a different kind of family quarrel taking place aboard the Orca in “The Shark Is Broken.” Set during the notoriously difficult filming of “Jaws,” the play traps Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss together while their mechanical co-star repeatedly malfunctions. The shark may be out of commission, but the actors’ egos are in excellent working order.
Written by Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon, and directed by Laura Moore, the comedy stars Tim Moore as Robert Shaw, Scott Morehead as Roy Scheider and Cameron Vargas as Richard Dreyfuss.
Their conversations wander through ambition, insecurity, politics, fame and the uneasy chemistry of three men who need one another professionally but might prefer a little more personal space. In a play about a movie monster, the most entertaining dangers are entirely human.
“The Shark Is Broken” performs Thursday, Nov. 5, at 7 p.m.; Saturday, Nov. 7, at 7 p.m.; and Sunday, Nov. 8, at 3 p.m. Its run continues through Nov. 15. That makes Saturday an unusual double feature: a 3 p.m. visit to the Addams mansion, followed by a 7 p.m. return to the Orca. Neither gathering is likely to end in polite conversation.
Both shows are presented at the Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts, 2313 Eagle Drive. Tickets and information are available at pagosacenter.org or by calling (970) 731-SHOW (7469).
>