Sussex Academy to present ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ Nov. 15-17

Sussex Academy High School in Georgetown will present the musical dark comedy “Little Shop of Horrors” at 7 p.m., Friday, Nov., 15, 2 and 7 p.m., Saturday Nov. 16, and 2 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 7, at 21150 Airport Road, Georgetown.

“Little Shop of Horrors” follows the story of the meek Seymour Krelborn and the co-worker he is secretly in love with, Audrey.

Seymour comes across a very strange and interesting plant that he decides to name Audrey II. The plant attracts business to the rundown flower shop where Seymour works, but what Seymour doesn’t know is that the Audrey II requires human blood to thrive. Seymour goes on to feed Audrey’s abusive boyfriend Orin to the plant but then must come up with more bodies for the insatiable plant.

Because so many well-qualified students auditioned, Director Erin Bobby said she decided to create two different full casts to perform the show.

One cast features junior Wade Stout as Seymour and junior Keavy Rhodes as Audrey, while the other cast presents senior Jake Farrell as Seymour and senior Elli Oechsler as Audrey. Equal numbers of other students from all grade levels make up the rest of each cast, and all members embraced the experience and used it to their advantage. While both casts are presented with the same material, each actor has found a way to create his or her own version of the character.

“Being able to have a counterpart to learn from has helped me better my character. I still make my own choices and have my own character, but being able to take from my counterpart and work parts of her character into mine has really helped,” said junior Savannah Nagy, who will be playing one of the Greek chorus street urchins in Stout’s cast.

The casts have largely shared staging rehearsals, but they were given specific individual attention once the scene that was being focused on that day was shaped. Casts also shared choreography rehearsals, where the casts adopted the nicknames “biggies” and “smalls” from choreographer Autumn Schneider when the constant switching back and forth became chaotic. After each act was fully blocked and choreographed, the casts split up to run the acts individually.

Bobby said, “It has been a lot of fun to help each group find their different versions of the characters.”

Tickets can be purchased at the door. Cost is $10 for adults, and $5 for students and children. Parental discretion is advised as “Little Shop of Horrors” contains some PG-13 material, including vulgar language, mild violence and some sexual references.

For more information, go to www.sussexacademy.org.