THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — They’re creepy, they’re kooky and they’re doing choreography. The Addams Family has left their mansion and moved into the Kavli Theatre in Thousand Oaks for a few weeks. 

The whole macabre clan is here, Uncle Fester, and, of course, the matriarch, Morticia, a housewife who is far from desperate.

It’s a role Teri Hatcher was kind of legally obligated to play.

“I was telling somebody if you get offered the role of Morticia Addams, it’s the law that you have to do it,” she joked.

Her first memories of the far from ordinary brood go back to the original TV show. Growing up an only child in Northern California, the Addams were the family she’d come home to after school.

“I was a bit of a come home from school latchkey kid television junkie,” Hatcher recalled. “And I definitely watched [the show] in reruns, I guess.”

Approaching the musical, she stayed away from previous versions, preferring to breathe her own life into Morticia. Many amazing actresses have played the role over the decades — Carolyn Jones, Anjelica Huston, Catherine Zeta Jones — but Teri refuses to let that kill her confidence.

“If I went around comparing myself to those greats, that would be, you know, a sort of insecure place to come from,” she said, adding with a laugh, “and I’m insecure enough as it is.”

Slipping into character is a snap, she says, since so much of what makes Morticia — or any of the Addams — recognizable is the costume.

“Put it all on and it sort of speaks for itself,” Hatcher said. “You know, you’ve got that classic long black hair and that pale, alabaster, kind of warmed up from death skin and the beautiful, tight, long gorgeous gown with the cleavage.”

Meanwhile, her co-star Ed Staudenmayer grew into his character of Gomez by growing a mustache.

“This makes me look a lot like my father,” he pointed out.

The devilishly dapper duo is simply dying to take their tango to the stage for the opening of this 5 Star Theatricals production. Staudenmayer grew up in SoCal and studied at UCLA, so Thousand Oaks is very close to home.

“This is heaven here,” he said. “All my friends from college and high school and all of my family are out here. So they’re all coming. It’s exciting.”

The theatre is also close to Hatcher’s home and her heart. She and her daughter saw The Nutcracker and other performances at the Kavli Theatre over the years — a connection that felt fated and made this opportunity even harder to pass up.

“It made me feel like oh, this would be really great to do this sort of in my home turf, where I have a lot of good memories,” she said. 

The neat, sweet, and petite Leander Baxter Lewis also feels perfectly at home with his new theatre family. Pugsley is his first real role, although the stage is a kind of in his DNA. His mother starred in Annie as a child and now does voice acting. His father works for Performances magazine, which is distributed at arts venues across SoCal, like the Pasadena Playhouse, the Hollywood Bowl, and the Segerstrom Center for the Performing Arts.

Like a good student, the thirteen-year-old did his homework, and he has some strong opinions about the material.

“I did see the 1991 movie, and I thought it was… I thought it was pretty good,” Lewis said, “But I do prefer the musical personally.”

His onstage parents agree.

“The music is so fun,” Staudenmayer said, “and it’s great to be doing it this time a year with Halloween coming. It just gets you into the mood for the season.”

“I wake up in the middle of the night going, ‘Death is just around the corner,’” Hatcher sang, pointing to her head. “Like, it’s just in there.”

The Addams, on the other hand, are pretty out there, but throw the story in a caldron and boil it down and Hatcher says the close-knit clan is actually not all that different.

“It follows a very typical story which is a daughter who is growing up too fast for her parents and a husband who maybe isn’t telling the truth to the wife, and people’s egos get involved and there’s hurt feelings,” she explained. “Those are all really relatable things. But it’s put in the context of this crazy, strange family that is obsessed with, you know, darkness and death.”

"The Addams Family" runs through Oct. 23.  For information visit, 5startheatricals.com.