The horror comedy is a 1960s style rock musical. And the science fiction elements of the story created some challenges for the crew that brought it to life in the small historic theater.
“The technical aspect has me blown away,” said Smith.
Local high school student, Evan Smith, was in the audience last weekend.
Especially the revolving stage. I wasn’t expecting it. Even Audrey II was so awesome. I didn’t think it would move,” said Smith.
Little Shop of Horrors follows Seymour Krelborn, a meek floral assistant who feels stuck on Skid Row. The story takes a turn when he discovers a bizarre, exotic plant during a sudden solar eclipse. While the strange plant attracts massive crowds and saves the business, Seymour discovers a horrible secret: Audrey II feeds exclusively on human blood.
In the production, Audrey II starts as a small regular sized hand held plant and grows to be a large monster by the end of the show.
Director Shannon Lee constructed four different versions of the Audrey II puppet by hand.
“The first two puppets I built in one afternoon. It was a breeze, and it was so fun. I was so proud of them. Then we got to the third puppet, and it took me about a week to build it. Then we got to the terror that is Pod Number Four. She gave us fits after fits after fits,” said Lee.
The Lyric houses a small traditional stage space with limited side and backstage areas. For this production, most of the action took place on the custom revolving stage — a rotating circle platform in the center of the stage. The dimensions of the revolve stage defined the space in which Lee could build the largest puppet.
“Widthwise, she couldn’t be more than four feet wide, and she couldn’t be longer than five feet from the nose to the back of her head, because she had to fit on the revolve. Then you had to get a puppeteer inside it to operate it from the inside through all of Act Two while eating three other people,” said Lee.
The puppeteer helping Audrey II consume the cast is Nate Andrews.
“I play a cop in the ensemble at the beginning, but my primary onstage role is being the big, last Audrey II in the whole second act. That has been a beast,” said Andrews.
Andrews helped Lee problem solve – and rework - multiple iterations of the largest version of Audrey II to make sure he could operate it from the inside.
“It actually started out as a platform I was going to sit on, but having people be eaten and all that wasn’t functional. The director, Shannon Lee, and I spent hours here one night—until about 1:30—figuring out how I could wear it. We used a backpack, a metal brace, PVC pipe, foam, chicken wire, and bungees to make it work,” said Andrews.
Bringing Audrey II to life also meant figuring out how to make the plant’s three onstage feedings of full-sized humans look convincing despite the limited space.
“It’s a makeshift bench wide enough for me to sit on, made from a little piece of two-by-four. The sides are decorated to look like a pot, and the plant has a sheet down the bottom with leaves and other details,” said Andrews.
They created a hatch door so as Audrey II eats the characters–they’re able to get off stage unseen by the audience.
Ryan Bailey is the technical director for the show.
“The show has a lot of technical needs, and we had a lot of engineering to do to make things work. We had to make a clock that worked, a stage that turned, and trap doors for escapes. We had to really go through the script and talk with Shannon, the director, to come up with all the elements we needed to make the show successful, because there’s a lot going on,” said Bailey.
Brownwood’s historic theater underwent a major renovation in 2014, but the stage area offers precious little square footage. Bailey tackled the job of creating an impressive revolving stage that takes the audience to the show's three locations.
“The first part was building the revolve for the stage, which we’ve never done in this capacity, as far as I know. This is a full turntable revolve, with the casters set upside down on the floor and the platform deck rolling on top of them. That was a huge challenge,” said Bailey.
The revolving stage allowed for smooth transitions between Mushniks flower shop, outside to the street of Skid Row, and into the creepy dentists office. The revolving stage was also crucial in making sure the Audrey II plant could grow and puppets could be swapped seamlessly during other scenes.
Ryan and his wife Tommie’s own theater design company, Wise Man Stage Crafts, caters to community theaters like the Brownwood Lyric Theatre.
He says he approached the project with the goal of giving the Lyric something they can use in future productions.
“It’s an investment for the theater. The more detail you can put into the various elements of a show, the more it ups the quality across the board. Keeping it fresh and moving it forward—not just doing the same old thing—is the goal,” said Bailey.
All the work that’s gone into elevating the Lyric’s technical capabilities for this show could pay dividends in the theater’s ability to produce more technically advanced shows for years to come.
Little Shop of Horrors runs one more weekend, just in time for Halloween. Information on tickets and future productions can be found on the Brownwood Lyric Theatre website.
