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A_Gardener\\\'s_Nightmare

Feature Article March 27

Feature Article March 27, 2003

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A gardener's nightmareby Wilma KennyLittle Shop of Horrors is a musical melodrama about a young man who makes a Faustian pact with a small carnivorous plant: hell keep it fed in return for the fame, love and money it will bring him. The plant and its appetite grow, and grow... The play ends with all the principal players eaten, and the plant well on its way to conquering the world with its offspring. Even with this hair-raising sci-fi ending, its a very funny play. The musics catchy and hummable, the dialogues snappy, and theres lots of action.

The plant, Audrey 2, presents some major technical challenges. It appears as four different pods in the course of the evening, each larger than the one before. Customarily, the first pod is a hand puppet. SHSs version, however, is a remote controlled robot, powered by pressurized air. Student David Timan spent hundreds of hours designing, building and fine tuning a delightful little robotic plant with a wide range of movements, an audience pleaser.

The second pod is a hand puppet, carried and manipulated by Neil Puffer, who proves he can not only sing, act and dance simultaneously, but can manage a third arm and a very convincing puppet at the same time.

The third plant is also a puppet, but this time much larger, and it has begun to sing and speak. It contains Colleen Thompson, who controls it, moving its mouth in sync with the words and music. Her sister Justine does the plants voice. Justine delivers just the right mix of raunchy blues, and together, the invisible sisters turn the plant into a powerful, animate stage presence.

When the curtain goes up on Act Two, an audible shudder runs through the audience. Audrey 2 has become huge, dominating the tiny flower shop. Her pod is now large enough to consume adults in one bite, and Brian Rombough operates her lever mechanism backstage. Others manipulate her branches, which by the end of the play have grown to fill the stage and have flowers, each centred by the face of one of Audreys victims. [Who, by the way, are warning us "Dont feed the plants!" in the final song.]

Credit is also due to retired teacher Dave Row, who studied puppet building from Jim Henson, the Muppets creator. The large Audrey 2, who originally came from Napanee High, had been languishing in the Hopkins garage for several years, where it had been reshaped by a not insubstantial cat into a comfortable bed. Dave brought Audrey out of retirement, restoring her to and beyond her original state. Years before, Dave had built another set of puppet plants for an earlier production of Little Shop but it had bit the dust in its travels around the province. Part of it lives on in the SHS stage lighting system, which was largely purchased out of that plants rental fees.

With the participation of the Government of Canada