Music Everywhere
Thursday 31 May @ 12:17:42 |
 Theater review: You Want To See Little Shop of Horrors at 10,000 Things Theater Company
by DWIGHT HOBBES
10,000 Things Theater Company is touring a barebones production of the off-Broadway hit “Little Shop of Horrors.” You can almost hear scoffers snort, “Yeah, right. That’s gonna work.” Well, I got news for them. Yeah! Right on! You’re damned right this stripped down vehicle works. Couldn’t work any better if the show’s composer, Alan Menken and writer Howard Ashman, had written it to be performed this way. And audiences can thank the ingenuity of Michelle Hensley, 10,000 Things’ founding artistic director. She made what some might consider an impossible task look very easy, creating in a small space with makeshift props what big-time producers spend a fortune to pull off.
Working this kind of sleight of hand is, just in case you don’t know, 10,000 Things Theater Company’s stock in trade. Because their bread-and-butter modus operandi is bringing culture to the incarcerated and displaced for free (the company also plays to regular folk for money, but they got their rep by doing institutional and community service). This time around, the tour opened at St. Paul’s Dorothy Day Center (which, by the by, probably is the most responsibly run--and, therefore, most effective-- homeless shelter and outreach center in the Twin Cities).
The premise to “Little Shop of Horrors” is about as wacky as weirdness can get. Flower shop geek happens upon a lame, little seedling that just won’t seem to blossom-–until he nicks a finger and discovers the thing responds quite nicely, thank you, to the smell of human blood and, in fact, has a voracious appetite for same. Oh, and once he’s nurtured the plant to the point where it’s going to live, turns out the thing can talk. Its sheer presence at the shop helps business boom and before you know it wonderful things are happening for just about everyone-–the shop-owner, the geek, the geek’s lady love-–until this floral carnivore gets too greedy. At which point the story gets interestinger and interestinger.
Hensley guides a gifted cast that stars Jim Lichtscheidl as Seymour the geek, Kate Eifrig as Audrey, Harry Waters Jr. playing Mr. Mushnik the shop owner and Luverene Seifert in multiple roles, including dastardly, woman-beating, motorcycle-driving dentist Orin. The chorus is led by world-class vocalist Thomasina Petrus (“Two Queens,” “One Castle,” “Daughters of Africa”/Mixed Blood Theatre) with Sonja Parks and Karen Wiese-Thompson supporting. The two-person pit band is bassist Jennifer Rubin and musical director Peter Vitale on about as many instruments he has arms for, including keys, cymbals and percussion.
It does not slight in the least any of these first-rate talents to acknowledge that Kate Eifrig and Harry Waters, Jr. give runaway performances. Eifrig steals your heart as the hopelessly vulnerable Audrey, and Waters tickles you half to death as the two-faced, money-hungry Mushnick.
It’s always disturbing to see reality rear its ugly head in an otherwise happy-go-lucky play. Accordingly, Orin’s abuse of Audrey is a sobering aspect. Thankfully, he gets his comeuppance. In spades.
“Little Shop of Horrors” at 10,000 Things Theater Company runs all over the map through June 24, closing at the Minnesota Opera Center. Free public performances are: June 4 at Alliance Housing, 719 East 6th St., Mpls., 6 p.m.; June 6 at Parker Skyview Manor, 1815 Central Ave. NE, Mpls., 2 p.m.; June 13 at Mount Airy, 91 East Arch St., St. Paul, 6 p.m.; and June 19 at House of Charity, 714 Park Ave., Mpls., 7 p.m. For info on June 21’s free public performance and all paid performances, go online to www.tenthousandthings.org.
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