Alan Menken’s cult musical about the attempt to revive the fortunes of a failing New York florist’s shop by nurturing a man-eating plant has hardly been wanting for revivals . Yet staging it in-the-round presents a special set of challenges; not least because a show conceived around a giant puppet leaves nowhere to hide.
The solution becomes apparent when Gunnar Cauthery’s amiable, bespectacled Seymour pricks a finger and accidentally discovers the nutrient required to make the strange specimen flourish. “You opened up!” he exclaims. “Now what made you do that?” One would have though the answer was obvious – it’s the bloke kneeling behind the counter with a hand up the stem. Yet the success of War Horse has turned visible puppeteers into an established convention; so it makes perfect sense that the horrific herb should acquire an ever-increasing team of operators.
Puppet director Toby Olié was an original member of the War Horse company, and creates quite the most abominably animate plant I have encountered. Not only does it fulfil the basic function of snapping open and shut, it also has a pair of expressively serpentine tendrils and a lithe mobility that makes its intentions to take over the world seem a very plausible threat.
Derek Bond’s production does well not to be entirely upstaged by its potted superstar, though James Perkins’s design imaginatively reconfigures Skid Row into a form of Skid Circle; and if the choreography locks in particularly well with the funky, soulful band it’s because Tim Jackson is in charge of both. There’s a great turn from Ako Mitchell as a deranged dentist who gets high on his own laughing gas and Kelly Price is highly affecting as Seymour’s ditzy sweetheart Audrey, whose self-sacrifice to the insatiable monster becomes the ultimate symbol of the depravity that can be unleashed when man stoops to compost.
• Until 31 January. Box office: 0161 833 9833. Venue: Royal Exchange, Manchester.
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