Terri Dunbar-Curran
LITTLE Shop of Horrors is “pure unbridled entertainment”, says designer Greg King. “It’s a wonderful pastiche of 1950’s music, and of course the horror flicks of the time. It spoofs that whole genre in such a wonderful way.”
The show runs at Pieter Toerien’s Theatre on the Bay from Friday until June 6. King took a breather from moving the show into the theatre this week to chat about the production and its most iconic element: Audrey II.
“I’ve always had a soft spot for the show. I discovered it back in high school, I thought it was such fun,” he says, adding that he tried for years to get them to stage it.
Having stage Wizard of Oz, King says he and director Steven Stead decided that their company KickstArt was ready to tackle the cult musical. “It was one that was on both Steven and my wishlists. We were both very proud of the production in Durban in 2009 and we longed for the opportunity to revisit it.”
The musical is the tale of a young man, Seymour Krelborn (Alan Committie) who works at a flower shop on Skid Row. Seymour buys an exotic plant from a street vendor and calls it Audrey II after the girl he loves, Audrey (Candice van Litsenborgh). But this is no ordinary plant, and it craves more than just normal plant food. As a horrified Seymour begins to feed it what it craves, it grows in popularity and size.
“We’ve followed the classic look of the plant,” says King. “It will meet expectations if people are familiar with the show.”
But in terms of operation and mechanisms, the KickstArt creatures are slightly different. King had fantasised for years about staging Little Shop, but when it came down to it, he realised that he would have to build the puppets. Research and extensive online digging yielded little help when it came to how to construct the various incarnations of Audrey II, so it appeared it was up to him to work out how to bring the puppets to life.
“I spent months figuring out how to make it work, and then when the scripts came, they arrived with a manual!” he laughs. “But in some ways we’ve improved on the original designs.”
There are four Audrey II puppets in total, as the plant grows in size. “They are all sculpted in polystyrene and covered in velour, a velvety stretch fabric. When it comes to the mechanisms, anything goes really. They’re all aluminium pipes, Velcro, canvas hinges and foam rubber,” he says, adding that working with limited means meant that he had to be creative with the materials he used.
One of the differences between King’s work and the originals is seen in the medium sized puppet, which puppeteer Brandon Moulder sits inside. In the original, the puppeteer twists at an angle and operates each jaw with an arm, but in King’s version, Moulder uses both arms to lift Audrey II’s lower jaw up and down.
And the biggest version of the plant in the South African production is operated from behind the puppet, rather than from inside.
“I love puppets and theatrical illusion,” says King. “The plant is both and bringing it to life is a wonderful treat.”
Puppeteer Moulder plays the role of Audrey II. “I like to call it the Audrey II workout plan,” he says of the physicality of the role. “It starts out as a hand puppet, which works my hand and arm. Then Alan operates the second puppet. But the third one is the ultimate workout.”
From a sitting position inside the puppet he has to stand up and lean forward into a squat position. Putting a lot of strain on his back and quads. The final puppet he refers to as his biceps and triceps workout as it sees him manipulating the puppet’s jaw with handle bars.
“The third one I’m inside is like a sauna, and I haven’t had it under stage lights yet,” he says. But it does have two small computer fans fitted to it to ensure airs flows through to keep him a little cooler.
“My job is to make sure musically his mouth is moving and it looks like he’s singing. It’s like lip synching on steroids.”
Moulder met with King in Durban to learn how to set the puppets up and has had them to work with for the duration of rehearsals. But there’s still a lot of preparation that has to go into a role like this. “I do a lot of running and I try to get a workout every day – push ups, sit ups, strengthening my core and yoga.”
As the only puppeteer on the show, he can’t risk injury due to not warming up or not being fit enough. “It’s my first time as a puppeteer, I’ve kind of been thrown in the deep end. But I’m loving it,” he says. “It’s kind of like dancing, but no one can see you. I like to think I’m rocking out in my room.”
King says that he is repeatedly blown away by Theatre on the Bay, and how well musicals work in such an intimate setting which people would usually associate with dramatic productions. “I’m always amazed by all the technical gear that fills every corridor and backstage space, and cables everywhere you look. It’s the intimacy of the venue combined with the technology that supports the show.”
“And the puppets are going to be so much closer to the audience,” adds Moulder.
Next up for KickstArt, which has staged shows like Cabaret, Annie, Beauty and the Beast and Sweeney Todd, is a production of Shrek the Musical which will open in Durban in May – but Capetonian audiences will have to wait a while before that one makes its way to the Mother City. In the meantime we can look forward to Sweeney Todd in February next year.
l Tickets: R100 – R300, 021 438 3300.