PLANT FOOD PEOPLE FROM THE PAST
I missed this primary time spherical, as a result of babysitting years, so it was grand to catch up. It’s a 1980’s revival, a spoof on 1960’s sci-fi horror motion pictures, with a number of vigorous be-bop and early Motown. And what could possibly be extra Britain 2024 than a skid-row set with roving drunks and dossers, and a refrain of three teenage women bunking off faculty hanging round by the bins beside a small store within the means of going bust?
Inside the store Mr Mushnik tells his employees it’s throughout: there’l be no job for orphan Seymour, and poor Audrey in her form-fitting leopardskin outfits is sporting a black eye from her loutish boyfriend (what dates this piece is that this, and her subsequent damaged arm”from {the handcuffs}’ is handled as a little bit of a joke). Will she have to return to working the golf equipment in “cheap and nasty apparel”, and go away Seymout jobless? But Seymour (a sweetly geeky Oliver Mawdsley) has been tending a brand new form of Venus flytrap, a flesh-eating plant. Perhaps in the event that they put it within the window, individuals would possibly are available? They do.
Unfortunately, the lad’s minimize finger reveals that the one factor that makes it develop – it leaps three sizes within the first half alone – is drops of human blood. Before lengthy he’s getting anaemic with the hassle of protecting it going. But once you’ve obtained a very good and really hyper villain – Matthew Ganley as Orin the sadistic leather-jacketed raving rockabilly dentist, the plant’s first huge snack is a no brainer. He falls to his (properly topical) harmful nitrous oxide sniffing behavior and the plant turns into an instrument of pure justice , wiping out the dentist liberating Seymour to woo the golden-hearted Audrey.
By this time the plant is 8foot tall and a really messy eater: credit score to invisible puppetteer Matthew Heywood for good writhing , innards-sucking and flawless inexperienced lip-synch, and a salute to the terrifying baritone of Anton Stephans (a person who has sung with each Tina Turner and Elton). During the interval a set of screens goes up on the open stage, suggesting the comfortable certainty that the plant , named Audrey 2 by the besotted Seymour, could also be much more monumental within the second half. And so it befalls.
The 4 co-producing theatres, and director Lotte Wakeham, do good honour to Howard Ashman’s gleefully ridiculous story, and much more to Alan Menken’s music. I may, do be trustworthy, have executed with out the doo-wop refrain of three women, although Chardai Shaw specifically is a grand belting voice. But Laura Jane Matthewson stops the present with Audrey’s plaintive dream about wanting a home and entrance backyard “somewhere that’s green” . And her “Suddenly Seymour” duet with Mawdsley is definitely correctly shifting, although by this time the lad is changing into the Macbeth of horticulturalists, seduced by brokers and the promise of fame. It received’t finish nicely for anybody. Shrieks of glee meet each demise. And when within the final preview two stagehands needed to nip on and kind out a wobbly prop fridge, the plant displayed confirmed a present for significant upstaging gestures which made us shriek much more. Maybe not for under-7s, nervous horticulturalists or dentists who take offence simply. But in any other case a cheering night time.
At New Wolsey theatre, Ipswich, to 23 March.
Then TOURING, SEE BELOW
Rating 4
TOURING
Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, 27 March–20 April; Octagon, Bolton, 24 April–18 May
Hull Truck, 22 May–8 June.
