Little Shop of Horrors
Producer:
Octagon Theatre Bolton, Hull Truck Theatre, Theatre by the Lake, New Wolsey Theatre
Year:
2024
Director:
Lotte Wakeham
Venue:
Producing partner theatres and Theatre Royal Windsor
A cult classic beloved across the world and an ambitious co-production between four regional theatres, this project was not meant to reinvent the wheel. The brief was to deliver the requisite spectacle associated with the musical to a reasonable degree across all the co-producing theatres. References were standard - 1950s skid row, florists, and dentists.
The key challenges were technical; working within the parameters of the venues, Lotte (Director) and I had to find visually satisfying compositions that also enabled the logistics of the action onstage. The cast was acto-muso (performers who sang and played instruments), with a band also onstage. And there was the obvious question of the puppet and how it would “eat” someone and how to get them offstage.
Visually, it was about creating enough detail onstage to sustain interest. Instead of a single powerful, operatic gesture onstage, my focus was on incorporating textures that would bring the environment believably to life.
