THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 24, 1995 TAG: 9503230147
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 15 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Theater Review
SOURCE: Montague Gammon III
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
The Encore Players assembled some respectable singing and acting talent for their production of ``Little Shop of Horrors,'' turning out an enjoyable and funny show.
The choice of script was particularly clever because nothing in this musical demands enough to embarrass a vocalist of modest experience and training. But the special dead-pan delivery of humor required by the play is no small challenge. The Encore Players met and surmounted that challenge.
After all, a musical comedy about a carnivorous plant that thrives on human flesh and blood needs more careful treatment than does, for example, the tale of a convent-bred songstress who traps the heart of a wealthy European widower.
The ``Little Shop'' of the title is Mushnik's Skid Row Florist, a business marked by its understandable lack of walk-in traffic. When elderly Mr. Mushnik tells his two employees, Seymour and Audrey, that he is going to close the shop, they show him a ``strange and interesting plant'' that Seymour found.
Miraculously, a customer walks in and buys $100 worth of roses during their examination of little Audrey Two, as the silently smitten Seymour has named his discovery. Soon both the business and ``Twoey'' are growing by leaps and bounds, but Seymour is sporting bandages on every finger. He has been feeding Audrey Two with his own blood.
The plant graduates from liquid to solid food at the end of Act I, and Seymour has been lured into a Faustian bargain promising fulfillment of his every desire.
There is a sub-plot about the boyfriend who abuses the human Audrey, but the heart of the play lies in its witty lyrics and its affectionate satire of American society in the 1950s.
Lanny Warkentien carried off the role of the nerdish Seymour with an especially appropriate boyish, slightly lost quality. He, and Cynthia Arrington in the role of Audrey, both sang effectively, even at times powerfully.
Other leading roles were taken by Drew Doolin, as the sadistic boyfriend Orin Scrivello, and Mike Denbow as Mr. Mushnik. Jean Sulecki, who built the largest Audrey Two puppet, and Bill Hanson and Carmelle Maldonado, who were responsible for the plant's smaller versions, were aptly credited in the playbill as ``Botanical Geniuses.''
Andy Grimes was the deep and menacing voice of Audrey Two, and Guy Wuori manipulated the big carnivorous vegetable.
It mattered little that the sets seen at the Amphibious Base theater were far less sophisticated than those that might be seen at other community theaters. A discussion of the lighting design treads on delicate ground, because either through shortage of equipment or of time the group did not solve the problem of lighting a multiracial cast evenly.
A little amber front lighting could have made some featured players more visible.
The play's social satire is just a small part of the content that, in some strongly held critical opinions, raises this script to a rare level of greatness.
This is not to say that audiences must recognize the use of choral techniques from classical Greek theater nor notice reference to ancient fertility rituals involving the sacrifice of paternal and regal figures to delight in ``Little Shop of Horrors.'' It's a fun show that just happens to pack an intellectual punch.
The giant plant with the deadly diet can be interpreted as a metaphor for the commercial forces at work in America at the height of its prosperity. By the time one gets to that thought, one has left the theater thanking the Encore Players for staging such a rewarding script. ILLUSTRATION: WHEN AND WHERE
What: ``Little Shop of Horrors,'' book and lyrics by Howard
Ashman, music by Alan Menken
When: Closed March 19
Where: Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base Theater
by CNB