Little Shop of Horrors

Little Shop of Horrors is a sci-fi spoof set on Skid Row of the 1950s, about the mysterious plant which grows from a wilted seedling into a two-metre-tall monster which devours most of the lead characters.

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It was the perfect musical comedy for Hallowe’en-time — a total eclipse of the sun; the mysterious ‘Audrey II’, the plant with attitude and voracious appetite; a Faustian deal with the devil; the plant’s diet of blood; a sadistic leather-jacketed dentist who dies of laughing gas.  The music ranges from rock-and-roll and doo-wop to touching ballad, and the smart lyrics carry the story.  There’s great dancing by the full company and particularly by the trio of street-girls who link the scenes with a sort of Greek-chorus commentary.

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 It involved lots of participants —  cast/chorus of 35, with another half a dozen in the pit band.  But the star of the show was Audrey, the magnificent 4-puppet creation of Deb Erb, which we bought from a Windsor Ontario theatre and later sold to one in Winnipeg. ACT saw this show as a sort of trial run for the brand new Florence Simmons Performance Hall.