For 'Addams Family' costumes, she had just the 'Thing'

Robb Ross and Seraphina Caligiure as Morticia and Gomez (Rochester Opera House photo)

ROCHESTER - Laura Jones of Farmington, N.H., has been designing and making costumes for Rochester Opera House productions for three years, but she says coming up with costumes for "Cousin It" and "Thing" for this month's production of The Addams Family may be her most daunting challenge ever.

"I like it when I have to use my imagination," she said on Tuesday.

She and her helpers went to great lengths to replicate the costumes for iconic TV characters such as Gomez, Morticia and Uncle Fester.

"We kept looking for a good pin-striped suit and couldn't find the right type, so we painted the stripes for Gomez' suit," she said.

Jones said Morticia's dress was equally as difficult.

"The pattern that we wanted doesn't exist," she said. "It was basically two different patterns." But she ended up piecing something together she said works beautifully.

"It's got the long sleeves and the low cut in front, but not too low for family theater," she added.

While Jones was charged with replicating the cast of well-known characters right to the T, she was given total freedom in dressing a gathering of Addams family ancestors brought forth from the family crypt by Uncle Fester.

"I had total creative leeway, any time period, any person," she said.

"The Addams Family - A Family Musical Comedy" opens Thursday night at the Rochester Opera House at 7:30 p.m.

The show runs through Nov. 2 with both evening and matinee shows.

For schedule and reservations contact the ROH website at http://rochesteroperahouse.com or call 603-335-1992.

And to see how she ended up concocting costumes for Cousin Itt and Thing, well, "I'm not going to give that away," she said. "You'll have to see the show to see how I did Cousin Itt and Thing."

"The Addams Family" is spookily sponsored, in part, by Federal Saving Bank and The Lebanon Voice.