Seedy Botanical Beast
This dark comedic,
musical has book and lyrics by Howard Ashman,music by Alan Menken, choreography
by Jamie Langton, music direction by Adam Young and directed & designed by Steve
Coker. It is playing at The Winningstad
Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, through October30th. For more information, go to their site at www.stumptownstages.org
Once
upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, a lone seeding was starving to death,
as his planet’s life’s blood was diminished.
So, he took his chances and threw his fates to a passing meteor shower
and eventually fell to earth onto Skid Row on the planet, Earth. This seemed like a happy place to him, as the
talented street urchins of the village, Crystal (Lydia Fleming), Ronnette (Kristin
Robinson and Chiffon (Olivia Spohn) were always singing.
And
the young nerdy fellow, Seymour (Jason Hays) who found him and cared for him and
even named him, Audrey II (Kimo Camat, Liz Ghiz & Tim Giugni) was a nice
enough fellow. Seymour even was sweet on
a not-so-bright co-worker, Audrey (Tawni Peterson). But she was hung up on this “semi-sadist,”
laughing dentist, Orin (Dustin Fuentes),who was not so nice to her. And the shop’s owner, Mr. Mushnick (David Mitchum
Brown), was a stogy old tightwad who seemed to care for no one.
But
that was all soon to change, as there was a new character in town from out of
this world and he was taking no guff off anyone! And one more little thing…he had had found
the …nourishment he needed for life but getting it was going to require some
clever manipulations on his part. Does
this lead to a happy ending...depends on who’s telling the tale and it would be
delicious talking with you in person sometime about it…yum! --A/II
This
story originally had its origin in the Roger Corman school of B-movies (notably
for introducing Jack Nicholson to the film-going public in a small role). It then went onto becoming a very successful
Broadway play and movie and added music to its tawdry tale. Margie Boule and Randall Stuart had a couple notably revivals of this show
some years ago and now we have Stumptown with Stever Coker at the helm and this
genre fits him to a tee, having,in the past, very successful productions of a
stage version of Queen’s, Flash Gordon, and an original film noir detective
story about werewolves, and also a musical about werewolf cheerleaders from
outer space (I kid you not) and all very well done!
All
the versions I’ve seen of this play, my favorites have always been the Greek
Chorus, the urchins, in this case,Fleming, Robinson and Spohn, who are a
smash. And the two leads, Hays and
Peterson, are in terrific form, especially with the show-stopping, “Suddenly,
Seymour.” And the outrageous character
of Orin (Fuentes) is over the top as the maniacal dentist. And Camat as the voice of the plant gives
just the right creepiness to the role.
And a special shout-out to the two set changers, Isaac Elmore &
Genevieve Hildebrand-Chupp, who are kept very busy during the show of changing
the scenes and “dislodging” the plant food.
This
is a perfect show for the Halloween season and I highly recommend it. If you do choose to see it, please tell them
Dennis sent you.
--DJS
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