Little Shop of Horrors at the Gallery Players (now w/ full review!)

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 10/30/11 at 3:05am

So any chance, has anyone else on the boards attended Little Shop of Horrors at the Gallery Players in Brooklyn?

It runs through November 13... a few bright spots but, overall, one of the absolute worst productions that I have had to sit through... and Little Shop is favorite of mine! I am still trying to process my thoughts.

A light up space ship making a cameo on a creakily moving wire, Emily McNamara as a drag-queen inspired Audrey, an original and newly designed plant with a visible puppeteer and cyclops eye, EVERYTHING built from plywood, the mother of the man playing Seymour border-line drunk in the second row of a 99-seat theatre treating it like a call and response performance of The Rocky Horror Show while he mugged from here to New Jersey like a 3rd grader in a school play and an Audrey death scene that ended in Audrey being 'eaten' by crawling off stage on her hands and knees as Seymour wept... I just. It was... WOW.


Updated On: 10/31/11 at 03:05 AM

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 10/30/11 at 3:10am

Best review I have ever read.

Period.

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 10/30/11 at 3:27am

... and I forgot the blond gay boy who was easily 6'4" and accompanied by a rather petite male companion. The proceeded to the front row to sit as close to the center as they could (considering Seymour's mother had claimed numerous seats in the sold out general admission audience for people who had yet to arrive at the venue), and proceeded to sit down, blocking the view of about 2 rows of people behind him as well revealing a painfully obvious lack of underwear and screaming view for the entire audience of his backside. Apparently more than Audrey II was hungry in the basement theatre.


I realize that THAT was not connected to the production, but it was just icing on the cake of a theatre experience that seemed almost too bizarre to not be planned as such. Updated On: 10/30/11 at 03:27 AM

[muscle23ftl]

Posted: 10/30/11 at 11:52am

I saw their production of Little Dog Laughed, a few weeks ago and it was excellent!

Posted: 10/30/11 at 2:09pm

I want to go now.


sounds like the spaceship on a visible wire pays homage to Ed Wood and the B-Movie 50's genre.....

smart.

i also want that mom in the audience...

purchasing tickets now

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 10/30/11 at 2:57pm

It very much did. However, with such a limited budget, they REALLY mismanaged the resources. It should have been ripe with opportunity, but so much was SO ill conceived. The pre-show was actually my favorite part - they had audio snippets from various sci-fi B-films playing. I LOVED that. The show started and straight to the flusher.

I will post more later.

[Overkill]

Posted: 10/31/11 at 12:24pm

The Gallery Players have put on many great shows. Sounds to me like they tried to take the B-Movie approach (which is smart) but Little Shop just can't work in a space that small. It's a basement. Little Shop needs SOME illusion when it comes to Audrey II, and I just don't see that happening in that tiny room. Wish I could see it!

Bwayguy, I'd love to hear more about specifics rather than audience behavior - which is awful, I know! - but elaborate on the production, please!

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 10/31/11 at 2:00pm

When I first heard that the Gallery Players would be performing, I was VERY excited to see it because I felt that a small, black box setting could work wonderfully for the show. It was originally performed in a small, East Village theatre with a small budget.. the original film was done on a shoe string. Surely this would be a fun, intimate performance of one of my favorites!

The pre-show was actually pretty fantastic.. They were selling cookies and snacks that looked like the eyeball in their show poster and audio snippets from B-horror films filled the air. I was excited!

A glance at the program before the house opened revealed that the director had elected to set the show in 1960 NYC specifically and his goal was to focus less on the “theme of fame and its self-destructiveness” and more on “different levels of seduction, both from the human Audrey and the alien / plant Audrey II” and the “layers of seduction and manipulation brought forth by the Brechtian presence of the three street urchins.” To further that goal, they chose to re-conceive the puppet design.

The entirety of the set was constructed from sheets of plywood, and at the top of the show, you were looking at the exterior of the flower shop, a doorway and wooden fire escape stage right and an open window stage left with a staircase leading to an upstage bridge that spanned the width of the stage and housed the 5 piece band. (I found myself staring at the flower shop window, where the plexiglass used was just a touch too small for the frame, giving the impression that someone had not measured something correctly during construction...)

The biggest fault of the production itself, cast aside, were a misuse of resources and focus and a director who wanted to be smarter than what was on the page.

As the music strikes the famous first chords, a light up space ship creaks out across the first row of the audience in short jerks and wobbles over the center aisle before 'quickly' retreating offstage, only to be seen again for a quick glimpse when they reference the eclipse in “Da-Doo” and “Don't Feed the Plants”, and we find our self face-to-face with the urchins - Vasthy Mompoint* as Chiffon, Tamala Baldwin as Crystal and Debra Thais Evans as Ronnette -, here conceived as alien henchmen of Audrey II. They wear white spiked wigs and glittery antenna as they alien form when narrating, manipulating or surveying the destructing and human wigs when walking among the skid row inhabitants.

Mushnik's florist shop, manned by Philip Jackson Smith* as Seymour (I said enough before... it was like a 3rd grade production of Spelling Bee and was Barfee), Emily McNamara* as Audrey (an Olive Oyle drag queen doing an SNL version of Ellen Greene on the postage stamp stage of a gay bar) and Ryan Hilliard* as Mushnik (repeatedly blanking on lyrics, struggling with lines, and often struggling with movement around the stage and the assistance of a cane.. and a distracting German accent!) was built as a rather massive wagon unit that could be rotated by the actors to provide interiors, exteriors and several perspectives, but was overall a rather bulky, boxy and rickety structure that was often cumbersome and at times awkward looking. Everything was painted detail on the plywood – faux wood grain and faux brick that were painted in a way suited for a very large house and a style more reminiscent of 1960s scene design (given the period of the show, I initially appreciated). A hand drawn clock on the wall had a sloppy appearance and multiple hands on the clock face that referenced every time mentioned in the show..

Nearly every entrance and exit in the show originated upstage right. When a character had to exit for more than several minutes and the intent was to exit stage left, the would walk up the staircase and across the walk way, often casting shadows across the playing area and cause a LOT of distracting movement that draw focus from any scene work occurring.

Audrey II begins life (plant 1) as a small stem and bud growing from a flower pot. Control provided by a single rod, much like the arm of a Muppet, and awkwardly carted around by Smith as Seymour. He made an obvious production out covering the hole for the puppeteer in the base and could never seem to set it down in it's proper place for manipulation... he'd have to work it into place, very focused on the task, and nearly knocking it over several times. When she finally grows, it is an eyeball that rises up from the pot, once again, nearly falling over.

Audrey II (plant 2) is usually a puppet operated by Seymour's arm in the plant head, but here was conceived as an independent puppet that could be passed around, tossed, left in places.. seemed fantastic at first. Now she was a large eyeball with a leaf for an eyelid and the stem and bad growing from the side. Smith often fumbled to find a button in the base to open and close the eye and visible rod from the side of the eye was pushed and pulled – with deliberate and visible action – to cause the bud to bloom...

Audrey II (plant 3) was voiced by Babs Rubenstein* and operated by Thomas Bradfield. While I still think that a seductive, female Audrey II voice could perhaps work, it didn't here. Rubenstein – much like McNamara – aped the work of the film cast as in an SNL skit and it caused Audrey II just to be shrewish and bitchy.. not manipulative and in NO way seductive. Bradfield provided valiant effort, but was doomed to fail....

Plant 3 was designed to be a giant pot with a narrow stem growing straight and rigidly upward before turning into, essentially, a fabric covered slinky that would reach all the way across the flower shop and head, roughly the size of an umbrella, was now the large blinking eye and with the addition of a mouth that had a beard made of flower petals. Clad in a black spandex unitard and dance sneakers, Bradfield would have to crawl through a wooden doggie door in the floral shop wall (shaking the drapes every time), lift the head off of a set of hooks built onto the pot and hold it high, all the while manipulating the eye with one hand and the mouth with the other, much like a Chinese New Year Dragon. Bradfield's resume includes stint on Johnny and the Sprites and Imaginocean, but it was physically impossible for him to lip sync the puppet. Because plant 3 is used so much more in Act 2, Bradfield would crawl on and off stage during long breaks, but was otherwise forced to stand in the corner behind the plant as though he were the final victim in the Blair Witch project. For Act 2, he was fitted with harness that looked liked a halo worn by someone with a broken back so that it could support some of the weight...

The plant kills tragic and bad. Act 2 saw the addition of several long branches to plant and, the few times they required operation, were manipulated by urchins in their alien wigs. The physically impaired Mushnik had an Urchin loosely wind a branch around him as the plant bit his arm and he struck it with a cane, the lights faced, and the shop rotated. The Seymour kill was virtually identical except that he had to wind himself in the branch...

Poor Audrey's death with comic. Ms. McNamara was made to wind a branch all around herself as she watered the plant and then shake violently (akin to wrestling your pillow) as it bit her arm and Seymour rushes in. When she dies, the alien urchins enter as Seymour lays her across the floor, he and 2 urchins with branches kneel in an attempt to mask her – with no success – as the plant head lowers and she crawls off stage through Bradfield's legs and the doggie door as Seymour sobs into a high heel.

“Don't Feed the Plants” finds us looking at plant 3, now with a large leaf attached to the Bradfield's shoulders and the urchins in Alien form... one enters down the aisle to the delight of the woman behind me who exclaimed “It's immersive theatre!”. Poor Seymour, Audrey, Mushnik and Orin then enter – not in plant costumes, not with plant heads, but in regular old 'looks' – and ZOMBIE WALK to center stage, and each is made to dance in a fashion vaguely reminiscent of Thriller as the space ship creaks in and two urchins stretch the vines toward the audience as if they are two kids swinging foam pool noodles at one another..

Paul Sadlik* fares decently as Orin with a pleasant voice, but he is a bit too likable and so Orin's aggression seems forced, but he was spared from much of the director's missteps.

Joe Barros did the show and cast MUCH disservice. The actor's were all made to play caricatures and to keep it big and broad, with the strokes of children's theatre in a large space, so there was no sincerity and no connections, no one seemed to truly interact with one another. He elected to spend funds on space ships and a rotating flower shop, giving multiple wigs to every woman.... a little more restraint would have allowed fewer individual things, but higher quality. Also serving as choreographer, he kept things INCREDIBLY literal. INCREDIBLY. LITERAL. Seymour mentions begging on his knees and he was certainly on his knees and begging. The Urchins mention spitting, they spit.

None of the onstage cast was miked, but sound effects and the voice of Audrey II were sent booming over two tony speakers and the band was highly amplified, often leaving singers with big voices struggling to project through.

The prologue narrator was Ron Raines* and the production's stand-by was Stephanie Martignetti*.

(* = member of AEA)

[Overkill]

Posted: 10/31/11 at 2:49pm

There's also a video of the producers, director and cast talking about the show and what direction they're taking it in. Honestly, this sounds like a good cheesy show. The set doesn't look that bad, either...

http://galleryplayers.com/plays/littleshop/

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 10/31/11 at 2:59pm

Overkill,
I saw the production photos and I watched the video before I saw the show. I had each of those reference points. It does not matter WHAT they say in the interviews. What matters is what they put on the stage. As far as the photographs go, a good production photo shows the production at its best. These photos accomplish that. They conceal the plant puppeteer very well in those photos and the lighting and composition are tight and show the set it's best. However, its practical use and its ability to stand the rigors of performance can not be captured in a photo likes these.. and the set does NOT stand up to any of those tests.
The show isn't cheesy and it doesn't sufficiently recall B-movies after the curtain goes up. if that was there intent, so be it. The execution is flimsy, cheap, badly conceived and poorly executed to the detriment of the cast, creatives and show. there is a fine line between cheesy and bad. This was bad. As I said in my previous post, a judicious eye that could have focused the resources would have gone a LONG way to repair.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 10/31/11 at 3:52pm

I will try to avoid commenting on your criticism of 6'4" people sitting in the first few rows (I do try to slouch when I can, but always wear underwear when going to the theatre), but some context--is this a pro theatre group? Cuz the review is hysterical (the photos aren't bad actually).

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 10/31/11 at 4:45pm

Eric,

The issue was that it was a small house and a good number of seats were available and the guy didn't look elsewhere, didn't really have consideration, his business was hanging out, the first couple rows had literally NO rake before the elevated seated started and he sat perfectly upright in his seat.

As I noted, everyone except 3 actors and 2 of the 3 stage managers were Equity members. If I recall from his bio (I can check when I get home), the Mushnik appeared in Grey gardens off-Broadway.

the pictures piqued by interest before I saw the show and I felt it had promise and would have been a great time.. I went in wanting to love it. The actuality was a very different tale..

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 10/31/11 at 4:51pm

What exactly were you expecting from Gallery Players? Is this the first show you saw there?

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 10/31/11 at 5:04pm

A glance at the program before the house opened revealed that the director had elected to set the show in 1960 NYC specifically and his goal was to focus less on the theme of fame and its self-destructiveness and more on different levels of seduction, both from the human Audrey and the alien / plant Audrey II and the layers of seduction and manipulation brought forth by the Brechtian presence of the three street urchins. To further that goal, they chose to re-conceive the puppet design.

I got constipated just reading that paragraph. Thta's pretty much all I need to know to assume the production will be overthought and misguided. "Brechtian presence" of the urchins? Please tell me that was a poor attempt at satire. Please?

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 10/31/11 at 5:32pm

Cats,
Yes it is.. but "concept" and "direction" aren't ruled by "budget"..

Matt,
That's how I felt reading it, but gave it the benefit of the doubt and risen curiosity until I SAW it play out... truth be told, I could even begin to tell you if it were an attempt at satire.. i was trying to sort it in my head.. as i said in my first post, it took me a while to work through the show in my head and break things down.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 10/31/11 at 8:42pm

I've seen several shows at Gallery, and done a few as well. They quality of the productions runs the gamut from outstanding to horrible. In my experience, the plays tend to be much better than the musicals.

[lynnespocktoo]

Posted: 11/1/11 at 9:45pm

I saw Reefer Magic there and thought it was fun and funny.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 11/1/11 at 10:39pm

Mmmm Reefer Magic...

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 11/1/11 at 10:52pm

Henrik,
I was very disappointed, partly, because the company, the space and it's size.. Little Shop should have been a perfect choice! Oh well... Perhaps I will see another show there, but this production certainly gave me no reason to return.

Eric,
Perhaps it wasn't the booze that did Seymour's Mamma Rose in. Perhaps the Gallery Players had shared a bit of their Reefer Magic prior to the their performance.

[Hank]

Posted: 11/2/11 at 1:03pm

I agree with Henrik, the plays are better than the musicals, but I still like visiting this cool neighborhood of Park Slope, and this production of Little Shop will bring me back, no matter what. It ssounds like a fun night out.