Handsome Hi-5er heads to the dark side

Nick Bond
March 13, 2013

With The Addams Family musical opening at the Capitol Theatre on March 23, actor Tim Maddren – who plays Wednesday Addams’ love interest Lucas Beineke – has a busy few weeks ahead. Somewhere in between performances in the big-budget musical, he’ll marry his own real-life love interest.

“I get married in the show on opening night, and then a few days later I get married in real life. Honestly, it’s a bit hectic and I’m struggling to balance it all,” Maddren admitted.

Still, the performer is as relentlessly cheerful as you’d expect from someone who’s spent the past four years as a key member of children’s musical group Hi-5. In The Addams Family he continues playing to type as Lucas, the handsome, wholesome teen Wednesday (Teagan Wouters) finds herself falling for. Of course, wholesome is a dirty word in the Addams household, so when Wednesday’s father Gomez (John Waters) finds out, she begs him not to tell her mother Morticia (Chloe Dallimore).

“Lucas comes from a normal family and had a totally normal upbringing, but underneath it all he’s got a real desire to break out of that and live a little differently. He meets a dark and gloomy girl with a crossbow called Wednesday, and he immediately recognises that’s what he wants to be like,” Maddren said.

“On the surface, he is that nice, clean-cut dude, but underneath it all he’s a little bit dark and twisted. I love being Wednesday’s romantic interest – our characters have such a kooky, strange little relationship going on.”

As the picture accompanying this article would suggest (supplied by the publicist despite it having nothing to do with The Addams Family, but with full knowledge that Star Observer readers might like to see Maddren with his shirt off – you’re welcome), he’s a keen surfer who’s looking forward to spending more time hitting the waves during the show’s run.

“In Hi-5, I’d be touring everywhere; all around Australia and overseas. Now with The Addams Family, I’m so stoked that I get to go to work out in the morning and go to the theatre at night. And it’s something you couldn’t get on Broadway or the West End – I get to wake up, surf in the sun at the Northern Beaches, then head to the theatre and do what I love to do.”

Since starting out as a series of cartoons in The New Yorker in the 1930s, The Addams Family have appeared in separate TV series across the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘90s, and a pair of popular Hollywood films in the early ‘90s. Maddren said that this musical adaptation retained all the key elements Addams Family fans loved from previous incarnations of the ghoulish clan.

“We’re very blessed in that we’ve got some of the best creatives from Broadway – the top musical director, the director; they’re all hanging around with us for the whole time. We’re in the best possible hands.”