Feed me, Seymour!

After nearly a decade of discussion, Warren Arts will finally bring Audrey II to the Park Theater stage this weekend.

Audrey II, of course, is the show-stopping giant plant at the center of the plot of "Little Shop of Horrors." The musical, which premiered off-off-Broadway in 1982 before launching a successful five-year run at the Orpheum Theatre, inspired the 1986 film directed by Frank Oz and starring Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene and Steve Martin.

The story follows the plight of down-on-his-luck Seymour Krelborn and his co-worker, Audrey, who work at Mushnik's Flower Shop. The flower shop gains acclaim with the introduction of Seymour's extraordinary plant - which feeds on human blood. With a relatively small cast, the show is popular with schools and community theatre groups and has been a target of Warren Arts since the local performing arts group's inception in 2017.

"This is a show we've been wanting to do for a long time," Director Gregg Garrison said in an appearance on WBMC's "Town Talk with Raven and Rob" recently. "We finally found an appropriate time when it worked with the rest of our schedule, and everybody was very excited about it. When it comes to buying shows and getting the rights to them, this is one of the higher-rated shows. And the set pieces and mechanics involved are very complex, but will be great for the audience to see."

The cast and crew include Carter Cantrell, Seymour; Mary Wanamaker, Audrey; Lucas Patterson, Dr. Orin Scrivello DDS; Robert Elam, Mr. Mushnik; Cecilia Hunt, Audrey II, ensemble, choreography; Rob Nunley, voice of Audrey II; Delanie Sullivan, Crystal; Amanda Collier, Chiffon; Sally Rogers, Ronnette; Sarah Woodriff, ensemble; Kathy Elam, ensemble, costumer; Mary Wanamaker and Marc Pyburn, musical directors; Sara Nuckols, stage manager; Jay Williams, Collin West, Bri Phillips, tech crew; Russell Hudgen, Dana Sexton, Holly McNeal, stage crew.

While the on-stage cast has been putting in many long hours of rehearsal to bring the show to the Park Theater stage, the behind-the-scenes team has been hard at work to bring the various phases of Audrey II's development to life as well as creating the elaborate Skid Row set pieces.

"We have an amazing cast and crew for this show that have all pitched in and painted walls, searched basements and attics for props and worked on other details to make this set great," stage manager Sara Nuckols said. "It was a great help so that a few of us could really focus on Audrey II. Making the plant took a team of seven or eight people, and three or four of us spent well over 100 hours each working on the four stages of Audrey II. That doesn't count the research involved to figure out the best way to make it sing and talk. It has been a fun challenge to bring this plant to life and a learning experience for a lot of us. Gregg Garrison designed and built the framework for plant four along with Russell Hugden, and I helped create the shell and finish up her look. We would like to thank Tessa Eftimiades who built plant one, Jeff Elam who helped me create plant three, and Holly McNeal who made plant two. I'd also like to thank anyone else who held a pipe or a piece of fabric while we worked. We hope everyone comes out to see all of our hard work and this amazing cast. It is going to be a great, funny, entertaining show."

When asked what he thinks the audience will enjoy most about the show, Garrison was quick with a response.

"The songs. We have some incredible talent and songs like 'Suddenly Seymour,' 'Somewhere That's Green,' 'Get It' and 'Downtown' will just blow you away."

The show, which lasts approximately two hours and fifteen minutes with an intermission, is rated PG-13 and opens Friday at 7 p.m. and continues Saturday at 2 and 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 plus tax and are available at the Park Theater website, the Park box office at 115 W. Main St. and at the door beginning approximately one hour before each show.

“Warren Arts is giving us a lot of variety this year with their season of shows and bringing an edgy cult classic like ‘Little Shop of Horrors‘ to the stage is going to make a lot of fans of the film and the stage production really happy,” Park Theater Assistant Manager Ashley Gillentine Wright said. ‘We’re excited to partner with them to bring this show to life for Warren County audiences and we want to give a big shout out to the cast and crew for their hard work, talent and imagination as they’ve been working on this production.”