Little Shop of Horrors is a welcome blast from the past. It follows the story of an orphan boy who is taken in from Skid Row by Mr. Mushnik to work at his little plant shop. The timid Audrey is caught in an abusive relationship with a sadistic dentist who also abuses nitrous oxide. We see a strange plant that influences good fortune to befall Seymour; however, at the cost of feeding it a little blood. Soon the plant grows to such a wild proportion that simply blood isn’t enough and that it requires to be fed something more.

Carleton Musical Theatre Society (CMTS) is a student run and driven theatre club; however, don’t let that fool you in terms of quality. It may not have the production value of Broadway Across Canada, but they use what they have on hand to create some quality local theatre. I’ve seen a couple of their past shows and they were good, for a university show: this production of Little Shops of Horrors was amazing, full stop.

General Direction

Josh Rigo is a new face in the directing scene and a new face in local theatre development with his launch of Elevator Theatre Company, and my word did they burst out onto the directing scene with power! Every character was so well developed in both mannerisms and connections. It was an interesting choice to have a visible Audrey II (Tristan Fitz-Hardy) decked out in a Poison Ivy cosplay and I’m unsure how I feel about it. At some points it added some great character moments, but I remember at one point they were just standing there for a very long time.

The original movie, Little Shop of Horrors, came out in 1960 and the subsequent stage musical adaptation in 1982 kept the same idea of time being around the 1950’s. With this production of it, it looks like they tried to go for a timeless era with some clever lyric changes and the usage of smartphones. I’m not a huge fan of timeless era shows because it can sometimes come off as sloppy and patchwork; however, this go round it seemed to work well enough, even though Audrey (Maggie Wolfe) could have just slid into Seymour’s (Adrien Pyke) DM’s instead of going to the shop and dying.

Musical Direction

Blown away. From the first song to the last song, I was absolutely blown away. The Greek chorus (Emma Cohen, Davida Adefolaju, Priya Ramachandran, Virginia Larose, Kaylee Reid, and Eliza Rankin) were such a tight knit group vocally. The absolute strength in their harmonies really made them stand out throughout the show. This small group were vocally on point every time I saw them on stage and were very in sync with each other.

I am a huge proponent of having a live band where you can and that recordings go against the idea of live theatre. Understandably, Kailash Mital Theatre (KMT) doesn’t have the space of a full band to get the sound needed and singing with recordings really limits an actor’s ability to play with the music. It also detaches you from the experience when you notice the waiting for certain cues in the music, but there were few of those moments. Rebecca White did an amazing job at blending tones and the overall sound for the show itself; though, there was a definitive lack in some lower voices and that absence of a bass voice to anchor the sound was felt in some numbers.

Choreography

There’s not much dance in Little Shop of Horrors so that makes what choreography we see all the better for it. Everything was, for a lack of a better word, tight. My favourite moment was the choreography in “Dentist!” with some clever usage of stools as supposed dental chairs and some fun prop work with these mouth spanners.

The show I watched prior to this was Dreamgirls and this is what was lacking in that show. Each movement was purposeful and played off of the personality of each character really well. Josh knocked it out of the park when it came to the choreography for this show and, as I mentioned above, with this direction as well.

Design

I am a sucker for simple sets that make the audience use their imaginations to create divisions in space. There one big standing set, Mushnik’s Plants, was well designed and lit. The usage of the space was done really well and the lighting effects were wild! The usage of colour in this show was a technicolor dream in “Feed Me”. KMT is a well-equipped space to create some beautiful light work and I don’t know if it was intentional, but the usage of blue lights on the red curtains gave one scene a black and white look, which I loved!

Sound is always such a problem in KMT because it is a smaller space and designed to be both a performance venue and lecture hall, sound carries easily. I can’t fault sound issues much during shows because things happen during live theatre, microphone pops, missed cues for mics, or wires coming out, but that’s live theatre. There weren’t that many sound issues and I waived off the few I heard with this understanding of live performances.

Audrey II is the biggest part of design work for this show. The different puppets they had were well-crafted and well-controlled by the different actors. The biggest surprise I got was that the biggest puppet they had was on loan from Canterbury High School and was made by a student there!

Costumes, Hair, and Makeup

My general experience for costumes for student shows is it’s a very much all hands on deck situation: people bring in personal pieces that fit their character and sometimes it’s very clear that there is no consistency in terms of style when it’s done like. This was not the case and the costumes were extremely strong in adding that extra detail in character. I have no big gripes in this department of the show, as it was well done, but if I’d have to choose one thing is that the injury Audrey sustains at the beginning looked more like a little bit too much rouge on the cheek.

Standouts

This is where I’d normally give some spotlight mentions to folks who really shone, but that’s the problem: everybody was spectacular! Really great casting was done with each role and there was no character who I was meh about. The multi-hatted individual (Dominic Perrin) made amazing choices in character for each time we saw them: from Orin Scrivello to a customer to Mr. Bernstein and finally Mrs. Luce. Dominic was always a hoot each time I saw him take the stage in his various parts. Adrien and Maggie’s onstage chemistry was a fireworks display that made Audrey’s death so much more devastating and the absolute despair depicted by Adrien hurt me emotionally. Mr. Mushnik (Bradley McDermid) had such great stage presence and comedic timing, especially during “Mushnik and Son”.

I need to mention them again because of how much I loved them: the Greek Chorus ensemble was utterly stupendous! Each with their own personality, but such a cohesive group in acting, movement, and singing. This is a great example of how featured ensemble roles add so much colour to elevate a show.

Overall, Little Shop of Horrors presented by CMTS should be absolutely proud about the amazing show they created. The audience the night I went was wild with laughter and awed by the personal touches on a true Broadway classic. If you haven’t seen the show, I hope my words painted a fairly decent picture because you missed your chance on catching a show that is now my standard to compare every future version of Little Shop of Horrors I will watch. Congratulations to the cast and crew for creating a memorable experience!