Diamond Head Theatre
Ben Perry with little Audrey II
in Little Shop of Horrors.
But do you know it's name, its sex or how many transformations it goes through?
OK, to refresh your memory, "Little Shop of Horrors," which opens tomorrow at the Diamond Head Theatre, was first a 1960s film, starring a skinny but still weird Jack Nicholson about a shabby flower shop, a boy-girl romance and a man-eating, jive-talking plant that changes everyone's lives.
The plant is Audrey II so, obviously, it's female. The daffy blond girl in the story is the human version of Audrey. And Audrey II goes through four distinct changes, physically and personality-wise.
Audrey I, Cassandra Harrell
There was a second "Little Shop" film from the 1980s, starring Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene as the innocent lovers, and Steve Martin as a sadistic dentist.)The cast for the Diamond Head Theatre production is small - about seven. It takes three of them to "play" Audrey II: Mark Sumstine "manipulates" pods one, three and four; he's assisted by another manipulator in three and four; Thomas Villegas does Audrey II's voice.
There are more crew members in the show than cast because there's so much technical stuff.
The pods, designed by technical director Paul Guncheon, were rented from Castle High School who put on the show last year. Guncheon completely rebuilt pods three and four, reducing the height of number four - about the size of a Volkswagen Bug and weighing nearly 400 pounds - from 13 feet to eight feet. The new shells are "expanded" polyurethane foam sprayed over construction wire.
Pod one is really a hand puppet about the size of a football; number two is about the size of a watermelon; pod three is about four feet in diameter.
Sumstine manipulates the jaw in pod three while sitting back to back with a partner; in number four, he kneels inside alone.
"The pods are so huge one person can't operate them without having a coronary," said the 6-foot-2, 200-pound Sumstine. "In four, I pull on a chin-up bar to close the jaw. I must do about 300 chin ups a night in there."
The jaw needs to be opened and closed every time Audrey II utters a word.
In three, Sumstine's legs extend outside the pod covered with foam rubber and burlap "root leggings" to simulate roots.
"It's like sitting in a sweat tent," he said.
"He has to be a contortionist, built like a weight lifter and have the stamina of a marathon runner," Guncheon said of Sumstine.
"She's naive not dumb," Harrell corrects. "Audrey lives on Skid Row and her boyfriend is a sadistic dentist who beats her up, belittles her, berates her, yells at her. Audrey doesn't think she can do any better.
"She's really a cartoon character and that makes it very hard to make Audrey seem realistic."
The 23-year-old actor, who graduated from Mid-Pacific Institute, was influenced to act by her parents who met while performing in the Las Vegas professional cast of "Hair" back in the '60s.
"They were naked on stage together and fell in love," said Harrell, who appeared in the Diamond Head Theatre production of "Hair" but chose to remain clothed. "I grew up hearing so many stories about shows and I have always loved music."
She's also appeared locally in "Tommy" and "Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat."
Thomas Villegas, 28, is Audrey II's voice.
The Damien grad, who's been in "Once Upon One Time," "How Come/Lolo," "Once Upon A Noddah Time," and "Happily Eva Afta," says it's taken time to coordinate his recitation with the movements of the pods' jaws.
"And my voice needs to be lower and deeper and slower than I usually speak," he said. "But don't look for me on stage. I'm the guy standing in the orchestra pit watching the pods move their lips."
What: Little Shop of Horrors