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Little Shop of Horrors

Review

A monster success from the first 30 seconds

Sometimes you can tell within 30 seconds, and here is a case in point.

HumDrum AmDram’s production is so bursting with bravura and characters are so immediately and smartly defined, that you know it can only be a monstrous success.

Monster is indeed the word for the Howard Ashman/Alan Menken show parodying the worlds of science fiction and musical theatre itself.

The direction by James George and Caz Gilmore is distinguished not only by energy and comic invention but by precision in voicing and imaging.

Paul Comparini is one key performer as meek geek Seymour , the diminutive, adenoidal nobody whose discovery of a dangerously strange plant rescues a flower shop on Skid Row.

Helen Stoddart is also key as Audrey, after whom he names the plant.

‘After me?’ she says with a surprised girlie squeak, before breaking into a lyrical song that suddenly touches the heart.

And most stunning of all are Mike Palmer’s puppetry of the plant and its virtuoso vocal gymnastics as delivered by James George.

But the show’s success is also about a sense of style – highlighted by Steve Tanner’s effervescent band and by the chorus of one Chiffon, one Crystal and one Ronnette – names that will be recognised by those familiar with 1960’s US female singing groups. And it is about clever continuity.

Mike Allen - The News