The bewitching time of year has spooked the Vicksburg Theatre Guild into altering their typical season.

This year, instead of offering a musical in the late summer and one in the spring, the group decided to forgo the latter and just in time for Halloween is performing their production of “The Addams Family Musical.”

The Broadway show is based on the Addams Family characters, which were created by Charles Addams in his cartoons that depicted a ghoulish American family with an affinity for all things macabre and focuses on the Addams’ daughter, Wednesday.

The musical takes place after she has grown up, director of the show Sarah Goss said.

“Wednesday falls in love with the boy next door, who she thinks comes from a normal family,” Goss said.

The couple gets engaged without their families’ knowledge, Goss adds, and the show spotlights the night the parents find out and when the families meet for the first time.

“The show has all the familiar characters,” that were included in the cartoons and later the 30-minute series that was created by David Levy and aired for two seasons on ABC from 1964 to 1966, Goss said, including Gomez, Morticia, Pugsley, Lurch and Fester.

Goss said she had become attracted to the production after she heard one of the songs from the musical score.

“I said, ‘I really like that song,’ so I started doing some research on the show, watched some productions of it and found it funny, well-written,” she said, and added that it seemed like it would be a lot of fun to direct. 

This will be the first time Goss has direct a musical for the VTG, she said, and claimed her favorite scene in “The Addams Family Musical” was when the two families meet for the first time.

“As many times as I have seen it, I laugh through the whole thing,” she said.

In addition to Goss being a first timer in directing a musical for the VTG, she said there are also a few new faces that will be making their acting debut.

Also, of the VTG regulars, Goss said, this will be for many the first time to serve in a lead role.

“There are only two in the cast that have ever held a lead role, but all of them are doing so well,” Goss said.

“I have enjoyed watching them take their character and figure out the best way for them to portray it,” she said.

“The Addams Family Musical” will open at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, and will continue Friday and Saturday and Monday and Tuesday at the Parkside Playhouse Theatre, 101 Iowa Ave. There will also be a matinee performance at 2 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets are $20, $15 for ages 65 and older and $10 for ages 12 and younger and are available at the box office and in advance online at showclix.com/events/10243.

For more information, call 601-636-0471.