Little Shop of Horrors

Little Shop of Horrors is on everyone’s favourite list of cult musicals. The 60s spoof of the horror movie genre in which an innocuous plant grows to an enormous size when it’s fed human blood, was Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s first hit musical and one of their best.

This current production was designed for the 100-seat Hayes Theatre, Sydney, and although blown-up for the tour, looks a bit sparse on the stage of the Playhouse. The big plus is the highly-coloured carnivorous plant designed by Erth Visual and Physical Inc. It dominates the stage in act-two and with its various tentacles and marvellous mouth and oesophagus is the star of the show.

The nerdish Seymour, owner of the plant, is a walkover for Brent Hill who treads the fine line of bringing charm and likeability to the character even when he’s doing despicable things like feeding the plant people. From the moment he sings “Grow for Me” he has the audience on side and they root for him throughout the grisly but funny scenario. What’s more he even voices the plant, which makes for a schizophrenic directorial switch on the character not in the original.

Esther Hannaford brings a sharp edge to the vacuous but sincere Audrey, Seymour’s unrequited love, delivering the show’s two best songs, the plaintive “Somewhere That’s Green” and the ironic but rafter-belting “Suddenly Seymour”.

Tyler Coppin’s turn as shop-owner Mr Mushnik was a Jewish delight, especially in the clever “Mushnik and Son”, with its choreographic nod to Fiddler on the Roof. Scott Johnson was not a good fit for Audrey’s abusive boyfriend Orin, the dentist who gets off on inflicting pain and one of the funniest characters in the show. Josie Lane, Chloe Zuel and Angelique Cassimatis’s vocals as the doo-wop trio (in this version played Latina) lacked clarity not helped by Jeremy Silver’s muddy sound. If we could have clearly heard Ashman’s clever wordplay the production might have had more laughs. As it was sound was its biggest problem.

Owen Phillips black, grey and white set design for act one was, I surmise, a homage to the original B&W movie, but in reality it was dull. Likewise Tim Chappel’s costumes which looked like they’d come straight out of Miss Haversham’s Great Expectations wardrobe. Andrew Hallsworth’s movement was perfunctory, musical accompaniment sounded thin, but Dean Bryant’s directorial choices mostly worked. I did like the opening TV bulletin with SBS’s newsreader Lee Lin Chin which raised a laugh, and the blood splattering on the shopfront image as Seymour slashed up Orin’s body.

The charms of the show are many and if you’ve never seen it before you’ll probably love this version. I thought it was run-of-the-mill.

Peter Pinne

Photographer: Jeff Busby.