It’s that time of year when Lick-Wilmerding hosts the spring theatre production, and 2017’s musical opens tomorrow, Thursday, March 30! This year, the Lick theatre will host Little Shop of Horrors, the classic tale of a flesh-eating plant and a struggling floral shop. After Seymour Krelborn, a clumsy worker in love with coworker Audrey, discovers a Venus fly trap, the carnivorous vegetation grows hungry for human flesh and, as one might assume, havoc ensues. The Paper Tiger Online reached out to the cast of the musical to give some insights on their experience and what to expect.
Noah Wong ‘18, who plays Seymour Krelborn, says, “I’ve been working on the show for a really long time. The cast, the production crew, Mr. Z, Kate, and the costume designers have all worked hard to develop the show to make it come alive.” Wong is particularly interested in the development of his character throughout the show. “I like how Seymour goes through a bunch of interesting situations and how he changes throughout the story, for better or for worse,” he says. “I also like singing Seymour’s numbers.”
Wong adds that, as they continued to work on the show, the cast started to understand their characters more and portray them in their own style, perhaps in a funny or dramatic way, because they got more comfortable with them. He really enjoyed watching his fellow peers become those characters over time and looks forward to continue fleshing out Little Shop of Horrors into something everyone can enjoy.
Lois Shaw ‘18, the musical’s stage manager, enjoys the strange script. “It’s a really a campy horror script,” she says, “so my favorite part is seeing what we can make of it because it has the potential to be either really absurd or really scary. We’re kind of landing on a middle ground, which is nice. She also notes that a lot of the cast has been afflicted with a cold, a troublesome ailment during the week of the show. “We did one of the rehearsals on the weekend with a couple of people from the cast missing, and one of them has a lot of lines, but we needed to run the show. To make up for it, whoever was not doing anything at the time had to pick up the lines. Some people did it in funny voices, and it was kind of funny to have this invisible character with a ton of different voices. Even Mr. Asaro was doing it.” Shaw is looking forward to seeing where people laugh and where they don’t.
She tells showgoers, “There are a lot of more subtle things that happen with the choreography and stuff like that, so suspend your disbelief as much as you can. It’s silly, but if you can really get into it, it’s a really cool experience with all the parts together. Plus, my friend Ruby gets to eat three people.”
Christie Lum ‘19, who plays Chiffon, comments that her favorite part of the show is, “The singing, the dancing, and meeting new people.” She looks forward to performing with her peers and hopes “the work that [they] put into the musical pays off so that everyone can enjoy the show.”
Ruby Landau-Pincus ‘18 is the puppeteer of the show’s carnivorous plant. In regards to her favorite part, she says, “I can’t tell you, because all the parts I do are major spoilers! But I really like to watch Skid Row.” She notes that there is a lot of interesting stuff to be said about being inside a giant hungry plant. “My foot always falls asleep in one of the plants because a bar that rests on my leg cuts off my circulation,” she explains, “so I constantly have to shift to one side really subtly.” Landau-Pincus expresses her appreciation for Little Shop of Horrors, contributing to her excitement for participating in the show. “I’m excited to see how it looks when it all comes together and I hope a lot of people will see it too.”
Little Shop of Horrors will be showing Thursday (March 30), Friday (March 31), and Saturday (April 1) at the Ehrer Theatre. Tickets can be purchased online.
