‘Feed me, Seymour!”
The robust, insistent voice of Audrey II, the strange, rapidly-growing plant with extraterrestrial origins, will resound in Coast Capital Playhouse this month as the ever-popular musical Little Shop of Horrors comes to the Peninsula in a new collaboration between Fighting Chance and the White Rock Players Club.
Virtually guaranteeing quality – and a whole lot of fun for local theatre fans during the Aug. 8-25 run – is the creative presence of director-producer Ryan Mooney, who helmed last year’s smash hit summer collaboration, Nunsense, and recently directed the hilarious farce Lend Me A Tenor for the club.
Hometown favourite Kerry O’Donovan (also a noted pianist and musical director for Vancouver professional productions) takes the lead role of Seymour Krelbourn, the flower-shop nebbish who, in addition to being intimidated by his bullying boss, Mr. Mushnik (David Nicks), and tortured by love for his co-worker, the lovely Audrey (Melissa Clark), also gets pushed around by the plant he nurtures (voiced by Nick Fontaine) – a foul-mouthed, R&B-singing alien creature with a really bad attitude, not to mention a taste for blood. The campy, highly-twisted Alan Menken-Howard Ashman classic, based on the cult 1960 B-movie black comedy directed by Roger Corman, also features Greg Delmage (as Audrey’s boyfriend, sadistic dentist Orin, and a host of other characters), Spencer Schearman (operating the fearsome puppet incarnations of Audrey II) and Nicole Stevens, Ria Manansala and Veronika Sztopa as the show’s harmonizing Greek chorus, the Doo-Wop Girls.
Musical direction is in the highly capable hands of Vashti Fairbairn, with choregraphy by Angela Cotton, set by rising local star Andrea Olund (Lend Me A Tenor, The Mousetrap) and costumes by Fighting Chance regular, Oriana Camporese.
For tickets and information, visit www.whiterockplayers.ca or call 604-536-7535.