Skip to main content

REVIEW: Little Shop of Horrors at Capitol Theatre Port Hope

int(100691)
/By / Aug 18, 2023
SHARE

The performances in Little Shop of Horrors at the Cameco Capitol Theatre in Port Hope are proof that there is formidable talent in theatres out of town that aren’t part of the Stratford and Shaw festivals. The campy, zany, and just plain weird cult-classic is an entertaining musical that highlights the talents of scores of theatre artists outside of Toronto and those aforementioned festivals.

Little Shop tells the story of Seymor, a meek, awkward botanist who makes a Faustian bargain with a blood-drinking (and eventually man-eating) evil plant he purchases on the day of a solar eclipse. Inspired by the dreams of his beloved Audrey, his co-worker who desperately wants to crawl out of the gutter of Skid Row, Seymour publicizes the strangeness of the sentient, avocado-like Venus flytrap in order to draw customers to the flower shop where he works, owned by Mr. Mushnik, who raised Seymour with more cruelty than kindness. Seymor keeps the plant alive after naming it Audrey Two, first by feeding it his own blood, then later the men who become obstacles on his path to true love, success, and fame.

The role of Seymour provides Amir Haidar with an opportunity to show off his comic and vocal talents. Haidar embodies the archetypical dweeb — think of a cross between Milhouse and Fran Drescher — with a pitch-perfect Brooklyn Jewish accent and physicality that is masterfully contrived and executed. Alan Menken’s score and Howard Ashman’s entertaining, often comic lyrics perfectly show off Haidar’s voice.

Tahirih Vejdani, who plays Audrey, matches Haidar’s talents. Vejdani’s performance of “Somewhere That’s Green” almost brought me to tears, evoking a longing for simple pleasures and a hope for a better life.

Together, Haidar and Vejdani almost stopped the show with their duet, the iconic “Suddenly Seymour,” on opening night, abandoning themselves to the swelling emotional crest of Menken’s songwriting and matching the over-the-top, sci-fi story premise with an outpouring of adoration for each other.

Tyler Murree as Mushnik matches Haidar’s Seymour in his physical and vocal characterization of the complex shopkeeper — he also sings just as well as the featured leads — and Michael de Rose as Audrey’s sadistic dentist boyfriend and other bit parts manages to be hilariously over-the-top in this already over-the-top musical romp.

The doo-wop trio who function as a Greek Chorus and play other smaller roles throughout the show, performed by Sierra Holder, Taylor Lovelace, and Michelle Yu, are deserving members of this talented ensemble. The trio occasionally seems to struggle with Genny Sermonia’s choreography, which on opening night appeared to make the singing difficult for them at times — the aerobic exercise of doing the pony while hitting those high notes is a Herculean task. Despite that, their tight harmonies and pop riffs prove they belong on that stage.

These performances are quite literally upstaged by the four puppets that represent Audrey Two as the evil plant grows from what first appears as a potted baby cactus into a mammoth ten-foot-wide, six-foot-tall, fanged and tongued man-eating flytrap that drapes itself across the upstage wall of the set. Operated by Joel Cumber, who is also part of the ensemble, the plant is quite clumsy. Its movements aren’t always perfectly matched to Chris Tsujiuchi’s voice-over, but this imperfect puppetry just adds to the camp of the evening. I wonder if the hundred-thousand-dollar prop built for one of the more recent Broadway productions might actually diminish the cultish-ness character of the show.

Brandon Kleiman’s set consists of a rolling flat that acts as the front door of the shop and the dentist’s office’s door when Seymore visits Orin, Audrey’s abusive boyfriend, flanked by two flats that swing open to reveal Mushnik’s flower shop. At times, the set moves too slowly and interrupts the momentum of the action. Joshua Quinlin’s costumes, meanwhile, generally evoke 1950’s New York, and for the most part fit well. 

Overall, the direction by Rob Kempson and choreography by Genny Sermonia allow the zany comedy to shine through. And shine it does, in its weird and quirky ways. As summer comes far too quickly to a close, a moment of silly levity is worth the drive, not to Stratford or Niagara-on-the-Lake this time, but to quaint, cute, and charming Port Hope. 


Little Shop of Horrors runs at the Capitol Theatre Port Hope through September 3. Tickets are available here.


Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.

Stephen Low
WRITTEN BY

Stephen Low

Stephen Low received his PhD from Cornell University in April 2016, where he also received his Masters in Theatre Studies in 2014. He received his first Masters from the University of Texas at Austin in the Performance as Public Practice Program. His scholarly interests include twentieth-century theatre and performance, dance, musicals, queer theory, sex and sexuality, gender, critical race studies, and gay culture. His current book project, Hail Mary: The Theatrical Constitution of Gay Culture, identifies theatricality as the constitutive feature of contemporary gay culture. His essays have been published in Modern Drama, Theatre Research in Canada, Canadian Theatre Review, Queer Theatre in Canada. Critical Perspectives in Canadian Theatre in English Series, Opera Canada, and Intermission.

LEARN MORE

Comments

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


/
Production still of Riot King's Red at The Theatre Centre. iPhoto caption: Photo by Damon McLean.

REVIEW: Riot King’s Red examines Rothko’s uncompromising legacy

While Red cannot unseal the legacy of its paintings, this iteration conjures an immense compassion for the arts workers who try.

By Saffron Maeve
Kayla Sakura Charchuk, Jay Leonard Juatco, Kimberly-Ann Truong, Jun Kung, and Raugi Yu in Cambodian Rock Band. Set design by Jung-Hye Kim, costume design by Stephanie Kong, lighting design by Itai Erdal. Photo by Moonrider Productions. iPhoto caption: Kayla Sakura Charchuk, Jay Leonard Juatco, Kimberly-Ann Truong, Jun Kung, and Raugi Yu in Cambodian Rock Band. Set design by Jung-Hye Kim, costume design by Stephanie Kong, lighting design by Itai Erdal. Photo by Moonrider Productions.

REVIEW: Cambodian Rock Band makes scintillating Canadian premiere at Vancouver’s Arts Club

Jumping back and forth through time, it weaves the story of a father-daughter relationship together with high-energy musical performances and meditations on the traumatic effects of the Cambodian genocide.

By Reham Cojuangco
Production photo of Tara Sky in The Born-Again Crow at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. iPhoto caption: Photo of Tara Sky by Jeremy Mimnagh. Set design by Shannon Lea Doyle, costume design by Asa Benally, lighting design by Hailey Verbonac.

REVIEW: The Born-Again Crow is an ardent ode to unproductivity

Director Jessica Carmichael’s Toronto premiere production trucks along with the passionate force of an early-2000s emo rock hit, imbuing this systemic critique with rousing, playful life.

By Liam Donovan
Production photo of House + Body's Measure for Measure at Crow's Theatre. iPhoto caption: Photo by Kendra Epik.

REVIEW: House + Body’s Measure for Measure weds the beautiful with the troubling

House + Body provides few answers about how to resist (or further, dismantle) a corrupt government. But layered portrayals of the play’s central characters convey the emotional stakes of a system that allows for egregious abuses of power.

By Ferron Delcy
Production photo of Carried by the River. iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.

REVIEW: Red Snow Collective’s Carried by the River is still finding its flow

Playing in the Tarragon Theatre Extraspace, Carried by the River delivers visually striking images and impressive choreography but struggles to find emotional depth and cohesion.

By Krystal Abrigo
Rosamund Small in Performance Review. iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.

REVIEW: Outside the March’s Performance Review is claustrophobic for all the right reasons

It’s up close and personal, with lots of eye contact and sometimes only inches of distance between playwright-performer Rosamund Small and the audience.

By Gus Lederman