Big flower challenges MLT's "Little Shop of Horrors" cast

Apr. 10—Muskogee Little Theatre celebrates the Azalea Festival with giant people-eating plant.

The musical "Little Shop of Horrors" will bring the plant to life Friday, Saturday and Sunday, as well as April 18-20.

The play focuses on the hapless florist, Seymour, who buys an unusual plant during an eclipse.

Braden Thomson, who plays Seymour, said the plant is seemingly innocent.

"It looks like some kind of flytrap, but he doesn't know what species it is," Thomson said. "He just tries to find some way to keep it alive."

Seymour finds out — it's human blood.

"It's a little dark comedy and a little silly, but come expecting to have a really good time, fun music and really good laughs," Thomson said.

He said the biggest challenge has been working with the puppets that show the plant in three stages of growth.

"It was suddenly a lot harder to remember your lines when you had this giant plant pod flapping at you," Thomson said. "It's been a lot of fun, but it took getting used to."

Laney Edwards, who plays Seymour's loving co-worker Audrey, said Little Shop was her dream show.

"It was my favorite movie since I could remember," Edwards said. "It's been so much fun, but so much more stressful than I expected."

The plant, named Audrey II, is a main stressor, Edwards said.

"It's a big plant," she said. "We have to choreograph exactly how we die, exactly how we fall, exactly how we're pulled through. There's a whole mechanism back stage for us to be caught and we just got the puppets a week and a half ago, so we haven't had them very long."

Hazen said the people-eating puppet arrived in a 550-pound crate that had to be forklifted into the theatre.

"The Audrey II plant puppet rental was made possible through a grant from the Kirschner Foundation via the Oklahoma City Community Foundation," MLT Executive Director Laura Hazen. "We are grateful to have received the support funds to bring top-notch theatre special effects like this to Muskogee."

Patrick Kays, the offstage voice of Audrey II, warns the plant has "some terrifying things on his mind."

Jimmy Finnerty plays the man inside the plant.

"I blossom in the show," he said.

"It starts out as a little handheld puppet," Finnerty said. "When Seymour realizes that the plant feeds off of blood, in the next scene it gets a little bit larger, but we're not quite to eating whole people yet. That's when I'm kind of halfway inside of it. It rests on my shoulder and I'm controlling the lower jaw with one arm and the upper jaw with the other arm."

He spends Act II engulfed in the full-grown plant.

"I would say it's at least 100 pounds," he said. "The lower part of it rests on my legs, and the upper part of the mouth with my arms."

Finnerty said he had never done puppeteering before and the hardest part was keeping in sync with Kays and the other characters.

"I had to listen or know that they would be on their mark," he said. "I knew it would be a challenge to do. It's definitely something different. I knew the cast I was doing it with would be a lot of fun. I knew they would make it easy."

He said he was surprised how big the third plant was when it arrived at the theater.

"I had seen videos of it," he said. "But when you actually stand next to it, it almost swallows you."

Corporate sponsors are Advantage Autoworks, Advantage Terrafab, & Advantage Controls. Community partner, Sunshine Nursery Too, will have a pop-up plant sale and giveaways throughout the run of the show, Hazen said.