Although Plum High School’s spring musical heralds a return to pre-covid normalcy, the play’s subject matter veers toward the opposite direction.

“The Addams family are regarded as an odd collection of humanity,” resident artistic director Nick Mitchell said. “And I enjoy focusing on the people we might see as outcasts, especially because the theater community is really a community of people from all different backgrounds who come together and find a commonality.”

For the first time since 2019, members of the Plum community at large have the opportunity to fill the school auditorium for performances of “The Addams Family,” which runs from March 31 through April 2.

The characters will be familiar to fans of Charles Addams’ original cartoons, the 1960s TV series and the ’90s film adaptations. In the stage production, daughter Wednesday has grown up and fallen in love with a young man from a respectable family, and she confides in dad Gomez and swears him to secrecy.

Hilarity ensues.

Along with enjoying the script’s comedic elements, the students and director welcome the revival of a long-standing school tradition.

“It’s been refreshing the past few weeks. It genuinely feels normal,” Mitchell said. “Of course, we’re much more careful about making sure that we have understudies who are prepared. We’re protecting the integrity of the show that way and making sure that they can, indeed, perform.”

In 2020, cast members were ready to perform “Beauty and the Beast” when, of course, the spring musical had to be canceled.

“We actually had the castle built onstage, and it was finally taken down around mid-June,” Mitchell said.

That autumn, students produced a video compilation of various monologues from some of their favorite scenes in movies and plays. And last spring, a musical did take place, but seating for “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” was limited pretty much to family members.

In the fall of 2021, Mitchell directed a 30-minute adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” as one of a pair of short plays presented by students.

“The students had been interested in Shakespeare for a while, but I think at a first foray, they wouldn’t want to put on a full show,” he said about the five-act original, joking: “And what’s more, no one would want to sit through a full show.”

Fast-forward from the time of the Bard to the 21st century, and “The Addams Family” features music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa, and book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. Plum’s performances are at 7 p.m. Thursday through Saturday.

For more information, visit www.pbsd.net.

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