Cover image: Little Shop of Horrors at Planet Royale. Image supplied

Little Shop of Horrors

4th September at Planet Royale

Director, choreographer, production design by Drew Anthony

This production by Drew Anthony Creative leans into all the nostalgic expectations of the audience. Before the show begins, clips from old black and white pulp horror films from 70 years ago are playing on the projected backdrop screen, setting the style of the presentation and we are eased into the world of a flower shop on skid row, struggling to stay open through lack of business.

Mr Mushnik is played by Tim How in fine style as a shopkeeper with a big personality and a New York Yiddish accent. His two employees are Audrey, played with great physicality and skilled vocals by Emily Lambert, and Seymour, performed by Blake Jenkins whose precise movements and expert harmonies convey the quiet, awkward young man trapped into feeding his little pot plant with his own blood.

The projected backdrop that augments a basic set design of a flower shop, has little animations which hints as to what is to come. Occasionally this backdrop will change into things like a starry backdrop for particular effects in some of the songs. 

A chorus of three women keep the show flowing along with 1950s harmonies and support roles as friends, Greek chorus commenting on the plot and backing singers for the plant, sung by Clay Darius. Played by Carrie Pereira, Jordyn Gallop and Kya Moreno, each singer had their own personality but their work as a tight team, their costume changes and their fine vocals added a charm and connection to this production.

This production has probably been staged pretty much continuously in Australia and USA for the last 30 years. The growing, singing carnivorous plant Audrey II is commonly portrayed with varying levels of success using a puppet. This production does this for the first appearance with a hand operated pot plant puppet, but the rest of the show incorporated this lead character as an animated graphic integrated into the backdrop. A lot of the visceral enjoyment of the plant is lost through this decision and the production as a whole felt a little more ‘cartoonish’ as a result.

This may be the reason that the performer who played the Dentist as well as quite a lot of other incidental roles, Noah Skape, played most of his parts with exaggerated body movements and other vocal and facial tricks that created caricatures rather than characters. Noah’s voice work and singing were exceptional and the audience enjoyed his capering energy on stage.

The show builds to a climax as the giant plant insists on eating more and more people, performs duets with Seymour and finally has a solo turn – a little underwhelming when delivered by an animation, even with help from backing singers. It would be easy to imagine, with all the music prerecorded, that the voice of the plant was as well and I’m sure many audience members were surprised when the singer Clay Darius appeared in the curtain call at the end of the show.

A local Perth animation studio Aquixel built the projections and animations especially for this production, as well as the character of the plant Audrey II. The song vocals were excluded from the animation for Darius to sing live, but without the audience knowing the live singing was happening, Darius may as well have laid down the vocals once and added the recording to the animation.

Having said that, his vocals were flawless, rich, melodious and soulful which complemented the singing and musical theatre skills of the cast, all of which were excellent and a highlight of the production.