Little Shop of Horrors

A musical, the story of which involves the demise of the four principal characters, killed by an evil talking plant that is in search of world domination, hardly sounds like a particularly promising setting for the scenario of a successful stage production. How wrong can that statement be? “Little Shop of Horrors”, now approximately forty years old has been hailed a success since its inception in film and then on stage. LPOS Musical Productions’ performance of this now iconic story was a superb evening of brilliant music and acting with plenty of laughs complemented by much appreciation and applause from a contented audience.

For some shows, a full orchestra or band is required - and this is one of them. The musicians nowadays are often housed at the back of the stage or even in another room, so although the music for the production was on a backing track the absence of live musicians was of no consequence as nothing was lost in the overall well-balanced sound, in that the cast knew it well and came in on cue with all entries throughout the evening.  

The aforementioned four main characters were Mr Mushnik (Simon Jones), the Jewish shopkeeper, Seymour Krelborn (James Mitchell) and Audrey (Carly Jones), his assistants and Orin Scrivello DDS (Samuel Shanks), Audrey’s sadistic boyfriend. They were all played convincingly as they went through the various emotions from despair from the straightened circumstances they find themselves in at the beginning, to euphoria as things improve dramatically, and to the devastating consequences. They had the task of singing five of my six favourite six songs from this musical. “Somewhere that’s Green”, “Dentist”, “Mushnik and Son”, “Now (Its just the Gas)” and “Suddenly Seymour”. They were sung with much credence.

The other wonderful song is the title number which was sung by the three “narrators”. These girls adding glitz to the mix were Crystal (Hannah Wickham),  Ronnette (Kathy Kearl) and Chiffon (Jasmine Wickens).  Their excellent harmonised singing in a large number of the songs was an absolute delight and their ten costume changes, mostly done at high speed, were amazing. In many of the numbers they were joined by an ensemble, and this enhanced the sound even more. Choreography was very well thought out and performed. In a production where unusually evil triumphs over good, the villainess plant Audrey II was enacted and sung by Tony Bright. It was suitably gruff, bad-tempered, thoroughly unpleasant and very disagreeable. Every nasty utterance was clearly heard.  

There were six other cameo parts all interacting well with the pivotal actors. All of these were also puppeteers, plant tendrils and many joined in the ensemble scenes and singing. Again, a lot more changes of costume were involved here. The set was simple but most effective with three main areas of acting - Skid Row, the shop and the Dentist’s room. The lighting and sound technicians did a superb task with the many changes required.

I really thought that the display in the theatre foyer on the way out was a wonderful finishing touch - little Audrey 2s interacting with the audience on their way home. Nobody could go out with anything but a big grin.

Congratulations to the whole team of LPOS.

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