Apr 09 2008
Little Show Of Horrors
Thank you very much to Catherine in DublinBlog for posting about the Teachers Musical Society’s production of Little Shop of Horrors. On a whim, we decided to go see it last night, it’s opening night, in the O’Reilly Theatre at the Belvedere College.
It’s an amateur dramatics production, but the production values were very high. The set looked great and the plant was very funny without being silly, very animated and interacted well with the ‘other’ actors.
For those who don’t know, the show is about a florist in the crappy part of town and a plant that drinks blood. That’s it! Well, not quite. It has some of the strongest musical numbers from any show and great comic characters who sing out brilliant one liners such as “I know Seymour’s the greatest, But I’m dating a semi-sadist”.
Set in Mushnik’s Flower Shop, it centres upon a love story blossoming (sorry!) between the hard-done-by Seymour, raised by the slave driving Mr Mushnik, and the battered blonde Audrey, beaten up both by life and by her Nitrous-Oxide-Addicted dentist boyfriend. To save the impoverished shop, Audrey encourages Seymour to show Mushnik his “strange and interesting new plant”. The plant, the Audrey Too, immediately begins attracting customers and profits begin to soar. The problem for Seymour is he is finding it hard to feed his rapidly growing genus-horribilis, as all it wants is blood, his blood. So, faced with losing his job and losing “Audrey one”, he finds other ways to feed the plant.
From the opening number, we are treated to some great R’n’B numbers, sung well by four members of the Teachers’ Musical Society, but it is only when Denise King (Audrey) sings that we hear some truly great voices. For me she steals the show. With the beautiful love duet Suddenly Seymour, Tom Flanagan (Seymour) matched her voice to send a shiver up my arm. Shay Byrne (not my father) voices the plant and apart from a few lip-synch (or is it tendril-synch?) issues, he is very good.
The show differs significantly to the movie I grew up with (the movie with Ellen Green and Rick Moranis), but this just lead to some pleasant surprises both in the storyline and the songs. The huge closing number is fantastic and a credit to all involved in the production. Well done and thank you for a great night out.
Little Shop of Horrors runs from now until Saturday 12th April. Tickets are available through TicketOffice.ie. As far as I’m aware, if you show up tonight there will still be tickets available, but you can call 087 7866864 to confirm.
