A large placard bearing the words LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS hangs suspended in dark fog. (SMOKE MACHINE) WINO #1 sleeps peacefully on the far left edge of the forestage. (MUSIC CUE 1) A VOICE NOT UNLIKE GOD’S thunders in serious, prophetic tones:
VOICE: On the twenty-first day of the month of September, in an early year of a decade not too long before our own, the human race suddenly encountered a deadly threat to its very existence. And this terrifying enemy surfaced – as such enemies often do – in the seemingly most innocent and unlikely of places.
So begins one of the more unusual Broadway musicals ever produced, featuring a man eating alien plant bent on world domination! This July prepare yourself for the invasion reaching Grand Rapids as the Reif Repertory Theater brings Little Shop of Horrors to the Wilcox Theater stage.
Little Shop of Horrors began life as a low budget 1960 horror film directed by Roger Corman and featuring a young Jack Nicolson. Over the years it developed a cult following and in 1982 was adapted into a stage musical with music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Howard Ashman, the team behind the Disney hits of Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. In 1986 the musical got the Hollywood treatment, directed by Frank Oz of The Muppets fame. Currently there is a popular revival playing on Broadway and there is talk of yet another film, based on Corman’s 1960 film and directed by Joe Dante (Gremlins) called Little Shop of Halloween Horrors.
With a small cast and popular songs such as “Skid Row (Downtown),” “Somewhere That’s Green” and “Suddenly Seymour” Little Shop is very popular with community theaters. The Reif’s production, directed by Katie Smith, will feature an expanded ensemble and fabulous Audrey II puppets rented from a company in Wisconsin, and includes a seven page Puppet Manual!
This is my fourth production of Little Shop. My first one was as a stagehand in the summer of 1989 in the old 4th Avenue Theater in downtown Anchorage. I have memories of helping the dentist put on his clear globe shaped gas mask and resetting the vines that dropped down onto the audience for a good scare during the finale! I also appeared on stage as one of Audrey II’s “pods” that help terrorize the characters near the end. My poor parents though. My parents were devout Southern Baptists, but they did love the theater and never had any problem with me making it a career. But, I do have a tendency to mumble sometimes, and all summer long they thought I was working on a production of Little Shop of Whores!
Since that first production, I’ve also worked on productions of Little Shop at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and at the Grand Rapids High School. In fact, we are using a piece of scenery from the high school production that was saved in the choir room. It’s the sign that hangs in front of the set as the audience enters, “A large placard bearing the words LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS”
Little Shop has two main locations, Mushnik’s Flower Shop and the street. Many times when we are in a street scene there is a scene change happening in the flower shop, so a way to hide the flower shop became necessary.
The images of the skid row tenement houses, bricks and signs came to me first. Ideas for the flower shop came a bit later, mostly based on blocking needs and technical needs to accommodate Audrey II. For example, in order to move out the largest Audrey II puppet the entire back wall of the shop will fly out!
A large 25’ wide by 10’ tall wall will fly in to hide the flower shop. This allows the crew to make the changes inside the shop, while also providing a good background for the street scenes.
Using these initial ideas I built a set model out of foam and poster board. I found images online that I liked for the skid row tenements, old bricks and signs, and used these to flesh out the model.
Expect some changes before opening night! As much as I liked how the model looked, sometimes you have to consider the budget and how much build time you have. As I began to figure up how many stock flats we had I realized we were going to have to build about 8 more, which would be time consuming and expensive. We are going to cut down on the amount of brick masking units so that those stock flats can be used for the flower shop. We also saved money because we were going to print the bricks using a commercial printer, and now we will only print the bricks for the wall that flies in front of the flower shop.
We are still working on getting all the signage that I wanted, but they will probably appear to be floating against a black background rather than mounted on brick buildings. I thought this would be an acceptable way to save some money (those Audrey II puppets are expensive!) without influencing the overall look, and I can come up with some great lighting to distract the audience!
I’m looking forward to Little Shop of Horrors, I generally have a soft spot for musicals. But, a dark comedic musical with a giant plant snacking on body parts really gets me going!
There is only one weekend of performances, July 11-14, so get those tickets early!
