From left: Alex Gossard, Coyah Mosher, Mark S. Roberts, Taryn Noelle, Jim Thompson, Wyatt Aubut and Kianna Bromley in The Addams Family Credit: Courtesy

When Lost Nation Theater lost its performance space in Montpelier City Hall to the flood about a week before the company was due to open a big musical, it seemed obvious the show would be canceled. Instead, in about a week’s time, the cast and crew redesigned the production for a new venue.

The audience at the Barre Opera House on Saturday assembled to see a hilarious, heartfelt and fully polished production of The Addams Family. In theater, the technical term for this is a miracle.

Filling the seats was a simple and beautiful declaration of the community’s support for Lost Nation. Making the audience laugh was the company’s gift in return. Though a 12-performance regular run was compressed to only two shows, the mood on Saturday was celebratory on both sides of the curtain.

The flood delayed the opening a mere two days. Founding artistic director Kim Bent gave an emotional preshow speech to a crowd manifestly happy to be there. And then the lights were cued and the seven-piece orchestra began the finger-snapping theme song. The cast of 21 seemed to channel extra energy.

The script and score of a musical are the raw materials, but they’re no blueprints. Director Eric Love and choreographer Taryn Noelle had designed every movement in the show for a three-quarter thrust stage closely surrounded by the audience. To move it to a big proscenium stage facing an audience many rows deep was to reimagine it — and just possibly to make it better.

The extreme frontality in the new staging directly communicated the show’s tongue-in-cheek humor to viewers. Director Love belongs in a show-must-go-on hall of fame for rallying the cast and crew. Costumer Cora Fauser sat next to me and said simply: “Eric is magic.”

The joyous performance was the result of hundreds of individual efforts, from ushers to a knockout leading man. It’s just what bouncing back looks like.

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This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 1, 2023.

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Alex Brown writes fiction (Finding Losses, 2014) and nonfiction (In Print: Text and Type, 1989) and earns a living as a consultant to magazine publishers. She studied filmmaking at NYU and has directed a dozen plays in central Vermont.