LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

Blackmore Players at the Village Hall

11.06.15

for Sardines

Blackmore on splendid Fifties form for this classic tale of the alien avocado invader.

It's a cult show, and comes encrusted with traditions worthy of D'Oyly Carte. The Players pay homage to most of them, but manage to keep the show fresh and immediate.

The audience is immersed in the action from the off, with hobos and hookers and all the noisy denizens of Skid Row roaming the auditorium in search of a trick to turn or a bench for the night. And we are all immersed in the show, too, with a traverse acting area [impressively paved]. Especially effective for the nightmare dentist sequence, with Rob Lewis-Jones's wonderfully terrifying semi-sadist entering through green smoke and terrorising poor Seymour right under our noses. It's a risky strategy, particularly for a musical with everyone miked up, but the only down-side was an audible buzz under some dialogue.

This is a rural community group, with strictly local talent, performing in a multi-purpose village hall [with one of the most keenly priced theatre bars in the land]. But no compromises are made, in a great example of what can be achieved with inspiring, clear-sighted direction [Bill Edwards in the hot seat for this one, with choreography by Denise Jackson]. There's no pit, of course, but a great little band in the corner, with MD Shirley Parrott at the keyboard.

The cast is impressively strong. Craig Stevens makes a nicely nervous Seymour, with his geeky specs and baseball cap – superb singer, too. His Audrey is Lisa Rawlings; vocally assured, carefully characterized. It's a pity she gives most of her big number sitting on the stoop, invisible to almost all the audience.

Audrey II – the star of the show, really, with its multicoloured warts and gore-stained maw – is excellently voiced by Bill Edwards himself, with the expressive flora [uncredited] manipulated by John Hughes.

Mushnik, gravel-toned and fundamentally jolly despite everything, is engagingly played by Simon Haskell, who also provides the portentous voice in the prologue.

The three backing singers – Ronnette, Chiffon, Crystal – are authentically sung by Gail Hughes, Sandra Trott and Amy Pudney, with stunning show dresses for the finale; perhaps they could have been a little more engaged with the plot emotionally, though.

Memorable cameos from many others, including Charley Magee's Bernstein and Martin Herford's Skip Snip, and a big bold chorus of all ages and abilities.

Lots of detail to admire, even to those of us who are very familiar with the show. A nice new clock after renovation, with Mushnik's favourite fedora still hanging underneath. A nice brickwork scene curtain; I longed to see an actor walk across with it – much more dramatic. And a brilliantly helpful glossary in the programme, with useful reminders of Vitalis, Lucille Ball and Hedy Lamarr ...

production photograph - Kira Louise Photography

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

at the Mercury Theatre Colchester

01.06.2015

for The Public Reviews

This cult musical is a cultivar of the 1960 Corman film; from modest origins off-Broadway, it has grown into a major industry, with community groups drawn to its catchy tunes and off-the-wall story. Specialist plantsmen supply the various Audrey IIs, from dwarf to magnifolia.

You'd wait a long time to see a more perfect specimen than this joint production with the Mercury's Wiltshire twin, the Salisbury Playhouse, the work of its Artistic Director Gareth Machin.

Everything about it feels absolutely right. James Button's fantastic design, inspired in part by the street photography of Vivian Maier turns Skid Row into a three-storey slum, with Richard Reeday's band on the first floor above the shop. The subway rumbles beneath, while a corrugated curtain flies out to reveal the eponymous shop, which begins as a fly-blown failure and blossoms into Mishkin and Son.

The staging is full of ingenious ideas: the snapper and the hooker, the two clocks, the four phones, the bins, the magazines, the newspaper with the total eclipse on its front page and the faded poster for Attack of the Puppet People, another cult schlock horror classic. The costumes are clever too, embracing the “cheap and tasteless outfits” of the 1950s: the skirt of roses, the leopard-skin sling.

The excellent vocal trio – a grungy Greek chorus – branch out from “worthless ragamuffins” to plant-costumed backing group and botanical operatives taking the cuttings which will propagate this strange and unusual plant world-wide.

Crystal, Chiffon and Ronette - Gbemisola Ikumelo, Karis Jack, Carole Stennett – are a key part of this production, their numbers superbly choreographed by Nick Winston. They pop up in the gutter, on the balcony, out of the drains to tempt Seymour in Suppertime.

She's played by Frances McNamee, with a great vocal presence and a winningly vulnerable look in her Fay Wray nightgown.

Simeon Truby makes a wonderful Mushnik, and Jez Unwin is not only the rebel dentist in leather, with his quiff and 'tache, a glorious hybrid of Elvis and Vincent Price, but also, in quick succession, Bernstein, Martin, and the wife of the editor of Time Magazine. Ben Stott is an exquisite Seymour: slight, speccy, his every movement speaking volumes.

The three carnivorous plants are impressive, too, voiced by Leon Craig and animated by Andrew London. Tapping its feet to the Senior and Junior Schtick, grabbing its prey, turning its head knowingly, belching when Seymour finally succumbs.

The whole show feels almost operatic [in a good way], with the cast squeezing every last drop out of Ashman's book and Menken's music.

I half expected the height of the set to be used to make Audrey II tower like a beanstalk – instead, in a much more effective finale, singing clones appear on the upper levels and, as in the 1982 original, suckers drop down over the audience, threatening to devour all these enthusiastic young theatre-goers bathed in a ghastly leafy-green light ...

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

LADS at the Tractor Shed Theatre, Latchingdon

15.06.12

production photo:
Keith Williams Photography

An unlikely hit musical, Little Shop, and its creepy ending is unrelieved by irony or imagination in the equally unlikely setting of the Tractor Shed.

But Kris Rawlinson gives it a high-octane outing, with a brilliant band and the best Audrey II [that's the strange and unusual plant] I've seen, voiced by Jon Greaves [a raw, rasping Feed Me] and constructed by LADS' own enterprising engineers. The glove puppet is nicely malevolent, while the voracious last incarnation takes up most of the little shop, but does a great job of gobbling up its victims, with just the feet dangling from its fangs.

The humans do their best not to be upstaged by the vegetation: Dan Bavin as the sadistic Orin, doing a very scary dentist chair routine, Alan Elkins as the shopkeeper, coming into his own in Be My Son, and Lani Calvert as the wistful Audrey.

Sam Toland excels as the clumsy Seymour – his geeky boyish charm is absolutely right, and the moment when he lets his feelings have full rein is a highlight of the show, his gauche, warm, affectionate Suddenly Seymour.

The vocal trio [Aimee Hart, Jamie-Leigh Royan and Liz Pilgrim] boasts some superb voices, and the sound picture is often very impressive, though the acoustic is kinder to the band than to the voices. Lighting is less professional, I felt, with actors often left in shadow for key moments.

Kris Rawlinson directed as well as being MD and playing lead keyboard. Vicki Bird provided some lovely period choreography, and the show was produced by Peter Jones.

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

BOSSY at Brentwood Theatre

11.11.11

This tongue-in-cheek, slightly subversive musical homage to the cult film, is perennially popular.

BOSSY's version, in the cosy confines of Brentwood Theatre, was entertaining throughout, with a talented team of soloists, and some excellent work from the chorus. The chilling Finale Ultimo, with cloned carnivorous plants invading the auditorium, was a nice touch to end with.

Gaynor Wilson's production had a nicely designed shop for the hapless Mushnik [well characterized by Marcus Durowse] and an instantly evocative fire hydrant not so sure about the backcloth, though. But the plants [by Theatre Props, Leicester], the squat, fat, middle-sized one, and the amazing tentacled monster, were superb, and expressively voiced by Dan Glock.

The young lovers were outstanding Ross Llewellyn the nerdy, speccy Seymour, and Amy Wenham a delicate, tender Audrey. Her dastardly dentist, dismembered and fed to the voracious plant, was Curtis Brown.

The three close-harmony trios [Chiffons, Crystals and Ronettes] beautifully gowned were imaginatively used, and I liked the backing vocals from the wings.

Musically, highlights included Seymour's duet with Audrey II, and Audrey I's wistful Somewhere That's Green, reprised movingly for her final selfless sacrifice. The MD was Andy Prideaux.

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS
CYGAMS at the Cramphorn Theatre Chelmsford 
24.04.10


“How does it grow, Grandad?”
The stuff of nightmares for some of the tinies in the matinée audience for Young Gen's terrific production of that grisly, twisted musical Little Shop of Horrors.


A great soundscape, a somewhat flat set, with the band at an upper window, took us down Skid Row, to watch a florist's fortunes revived by a strange and interesting plant, thirsty for human blood and world domination.


There's a boy meets girl plot in there too, struggling to get past the weirdness, as geeky, increasingly anaemic Seymour [ a superb characterization from Sam Pridige ] wins the heart
of leggy seedling Audrey, engagingly played in a girlish whisper by Annabel Bond. Her wistful yearning for Somewhere That's Green was a high point of a consistently stylish show.


Sam Toland put everything into the sadistic dentist, and Kevin Jarvis was a gravel-voiced Mushnik. Very watchable star cameos from a quick-changing Callum Crisell in Act Two, and an invisible Bart Lambert provided Audrey II [the man-eating flytrap] with a vivid vocal presence.


There were some lovely moments in Jeremy Tustin's production, - the newspapers, the faces at the window – and I especially admired the use of the urchins, and the talented backing group [Crystal, Ronette and company] whose fancy harmonies and cool dance moves were a constant delight.


production photo by Barrie White-Miller