Bah-dah-dah-dump. Indeed
At Tuesday night’s performance of “The Addams Family,” one thing was on the mind of just about every woman in the theater – or at least, the women who sit within earshot of me in the PAC’s Chapman Music Hall:
It was…
The Dress.
If you’ve seen “The Addams Family” – if you’ve just seen photographs advertising “The Addams Family” – you know about
The Dress.
The Dress is the form-fitting purple-and-black ensemble that Sara Gettelfinger wears to portray Morticia, the matriarch of the Addams clan.
In the show’s opening number, when Gomez (Douglas Sills) is introducing the family to the audience, he somewhat colorfully but accurately describes Morticia’s frock as having a neckline that reaches “down to Venezuela.”
(And we realize that description is merely an exaggeration for the sake of humor. In fact, the gown’s
décolletage comes to a point somewhere well to the north of Aruba.)
However it may be geographically described, a fair portion of Ms. Gettelfinger’s anatomy is on display. Which prompted a plethora of discussions at intermission from the women in the nearby seats as to how one avoids what has come to known as a “wardrobe malfunction” while singing and dancing, acting and emoting in such a get-up.
Tape – double-sided and a lot of it – was the general concensus among my fellow female theatergoers. Some sort of invisible mesh that created the illusion of … um …
openness was briefly considered, then resoundingly rejected.
One vote was cast that this all part of the puppetry created for the show by the award-winning puppeteer Basil Twist, but my wife assured me I had no idea what I was talking about.
In the end (in the front?) the answer as to what keeps Morticia together is – in the words of Celebrity Attractions marketing director Kristin Dotson – “some kind of industrial-strength plunging-neckline bra from Victoria’s Secret.”
“It’s a question we’ve been hearing all week, so I asked,” Dotson said. “It’s to the point where I think Victoria’s Secret missed out on a great sponsorship opportunity – ‘The Addams Family,’ sponsored by Victoria’s Secret.”
