Fringe Review:The Little Shop of Horrors/RedubbedReview by Alison Little
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The Little Shop of Horrors/Redubbed
Naked Pictures
When: Feb 21st, 22nd, 23rd - 10:30pm
Duration: Approx 1 ½ hrs
Where: The Paramount, Courtney Place
Prices: Full $15 Concession $12 Addict $10
It sounds a simple concept: take a classic corny movie; and replace the soundtrack with four live actors and two cunning
sound people. The result, for The Little Shop of Horrors/Redubbed, is both strangely compelling and compellingly strange.
The Little Shop of Horrors is Roger Corman’s 1960 cult classic, famously made in just a few days on an extremely low budget. Every scene was shot
in a single take. The tale centres around a skid-row flower shop, and the arrival of a mysterious plant with unwholesome
appetites. The special effects and the acting are equally cardboard, the humour quirky, and the plot erratic. It briefly
features the young Jack Nicholson as a dentist's masochistic patient.
Local comedy theatre combo, Naked Pictures, have taken the creaky black and white tale, and translated it into a modern
New Zealand urban vernacular. Accents are distinctly local, language sharp, and various long-hidden sub-texts and
character motivations of the original revealed. The strange chemically enhanced love triangle between perennially drippy
Seymore, irritatingly perky Audrey, and cotton-wool botanical nightmare Audrey II is bought to life in a special and
disturbing way. Various other florally and chemically enhanced love triangles, quadrangles and occasional hexagons,
octagons and heptagons, mostly involving dodgy shop-owner Mushnick are also exposed.
The team of actors are energetic and enthusiastic, it was hard to tell which parts were carefully scripted and what was
freshly improvised comedy. The deranged tale rattled along quickly, music and sound effects seemed perfectly timed and
appropriate, and no one missed any vital cues. The audience certainly had a good time, and the cast seemed to as well.
The Official Warning is that the performance contains adult themes; foul language and fart jokes. And so it does, all to
most excellently silly effect.
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