View from the Green Room: Little Shop rocks Waterford's De La Salle College
Fred Kennedy as Seymour in De La Salle College's production of Little Shop of Horrors. Photo: Joe Evans
De La Salle College’s production of Little Shop is one of the best productions I’ve seen from the college over its forty-year history. This show is crammed with talent, bursting with energy and the attention to detail from Jack Cunningham to all aspects of the show marks it a top-class production.
It’s a niche show with fascinating characters, an interesting musical score that is firmly rooted in the sixties, punchy comedy with that ironic Jewish twist and a wacky plotline that is based on the low-budget 60s B-horror movie ‘The Little Shop of Horrors’.
It’s a fairly simple plotline with Faustian overtones of the man who sold his soul to the Devil for fame and fortune.
Freddie Kennedy is just the perfect flower store shop assistant Seymour who discovers an unusual plant and names it Audrey II after the woman he secretly loves.
His pet plant, however, turns out to be a mouthy, threatening alien species with a taste for human flesh that manipulates loveable Seymour into doing dastardly deeds. Poor Seymour becomes the constant butt of jokes and is terrorised by the ferocious blood-thirsty plant.
Seymour and Audrey are surely the most put-upon characters in musical theatre. Audrey (a very vulnerable and superb Mary Duggan) is the victim of her sadistic boyfriend-dentist Orin (the in-yer-face, obnoxious “CALL-ME-DOCTOR” punk Sam Marsden) and appears in a variety of bruises, slings and limps. Everything about Mary’s performance – singing, acting, dancing, limping – was a delight and her Bronx accent was spot on.
The Yiddish-spouting Skid Row flower shop owner Mr Mushnik (a hilarious but sometimes dark Cian Kennedy) is never slow to take advantage of Seymour's naive and trusting nature. Street urchins Holly Lynn-Coogan, Layla Roche Caulfield and Zoe Connolly act as a sort of glitzy-glam Greek chorus on the action as they comment on everything that happens in the storyline.
Evil Street Urchins Evie Burke, Caoimhe O’Neill and Leah Smith are their alter egos and present the darker side to Little Shop. The two trios inject pace and urgency to the tale and their street-smart sassiness is just right for the plot’s development as they remind us of life on the Skid Row world outside the alien B-movie.
The ‘Skid Row’ number is a choral delight and a sharp reminder of the economic and deprived underbelly of the sixties in urban America.
Jennifer White choreographs with lots of energy and the trio’s routines are bang in line with the sixties.
Singing is strong although the backing track made it hard to catch the vocals at times. Jack’s set design is basic but functional and there’s a wonderful plant that does everything it’s not supposed to do on the tin!
And that final ‘Mean Green Mother From Outer Space’ sent us rocking down the driveway on a chilly spring morning outside in the real world.
There’s a strong ensemble performance throughout and smaller parts are well cast with Niall Broderick (Snip Snip), Mrs Luce (Ann Strappe), Bernstein (James Farrell-Smith) and Patrick Martin (Cillian O’Keefe) all impressing.
Little Shop was a standout production from DLS that began way back in 1979. Quite an achievement.
