This past weekend I celebrated Mother’s Day by attending an afternoon performance of “The Addams Family” musical at Caldera High School with my husband and our two children.

The Tatom family loves “The Addams Family” — especially the 1991 film and Netflix’s Wednesday series — so we went with high expectations. We were not disappointed. The production was outstanding and featured several standout performances, foremost among them Madigan Perret’s portrayal of Wednesday. What a voice!

The plot centers on Wednesday and a secret she shares with her father, Gomez. Wednesday, you see, is in love with Lucas Beineke, a “normal” boy. Lucas is bringing his parents to dinner at the Addams’ home, and Wednesday confesses she and Lucas plan to announce their engagement. She begs her father to keep this secret from Morticia, whom Wednesday fears will not approve of the match. After all, the two families couldn’t be more different. Morticia chafes under Wednesday’s desire to present as a “normal” family, and the Beinekes aren’t fooled — no sooner do they meet Lurch than patriarch Mal begins looking for an excuse to leave. This puts Gomez in a terrible predicament — he’s never kept a secret from the love of his life, but he’s loath to betray his daughter’s trust.

There is a political undertone to this. The decidedly unconventional Addams family lives in New York, while the Beinekes are from the “swing state” of Ohio. There are several references throughout to the “left wing” and “right wing.” And as the story unfolds we learn that Lucas’ mother, Alice, fell in love with a very different man than the one she’s now married to — before he got a wife, a kid and a mortgage, the uptight Mal was once the sort of guy who played guitar and wore tie-dyed Grateful Dead T-shirts.

This likely resonated with me because we have just come through a contentious school board election. Schools have long been ground zero for America’s culture wars, and this year was no exception, with several candidates running on a platform of limiting academic freedom in our schools. If culture warriors had succeeded in taking over Bend-La Pine Schools, we might have seen the same banning of books, plays and other works of art that we have seen in districts all across the United States.

If that sounds hyperbolic, consider that a Pennsylvania school board recently voted to ban “The Addams Family” musical. Northern Lebanon School Board President Barry Naum explained his vote by saying, “The fundamental thematic theme, for me that I could see, was moving towards darkness, embracing death, embracing despair, embracing the pain.”

Setting aside the fact that this is an egregious example of poor governance (the role of the school board is to set policy and supervise the superintendent, not to micromanage district operations), and that “The Addams Family” was considered sufficiently innocuous in 1964 to be a network sitcom, Naum completely misses the mark on the “thematic theme,” as he puts it. “The Addams Family’s” embrace of death isn’t the theme — it’s merely a comedic device meant to bring a laugh. The theme is of setting aside differences in the name of love. In the end, the “left wing” Addamses become a little more conventional and the “right wing” Beinekes become a little less so as they all come together to (spoiler alert!) celebrate the marriage of their children in a graveside (haha!) ceremony.

This message of bridging divides is worth celebrating in our time of partisan polarization. But more importantly, this high school musical is worth celebrating. The talent of Caldera’s theater students — both those performing on stage as well as those working behind the scenes — is a joy to watch.

There are more performances this week, and you can buy your tickets online at tinyurl.com/CalderaAddams.

Don’t miss it!

Do you have a point you’d like to make or an issue you feel strongly about? Submit a letter to the editor or a guest column.