In November last year, Artem brought carnivorous plant, Audrey II, back to life to grace the stage of the Menier Chocolate Factory in London’s first production of Little Shop of Horrors in over 20 years.
The show has had fantastic reviews (see below) and sell out audiences, prompting a move to the Duke of York Theatre on St Martin's Lane.
Down and out Skid Row floral assistant Seymour becomes an overnight sensation when he discovers an exotic plant with a mysterious craving for fresh blood. Soon “Audrey II” grows into an ill-tempered, foul-mouthed, R&B-singing carnivore offering him fame and fortune in exchange for feeding its growing appetite… but as Audrey II’s hungry demands increase, all that Seymour holds dear is threatened as the plant’s sinister agenda for global domination is revealed….
With less than six weeks to complete the build and installation, making Audrey II was no mean feet. She appears in 4 different stages of growth during the performance – initially a 40cm plant in a coffee tin transforming into a colossal 2.3 m tall singing carnivore!
The different incarnations of Audrey II were initially sculpted in clay, with the final and largest requiring over ½ tonne of clay and a forklift truck to manoeuvre her around the workshop.
The fabricating team worked hard on the aesthetic finish of the plants including giant leaves and foliage. The very tight deadline also necessitated the construction of stand in props to enable the cast to rehearse prior to receiving the finished plants.
A team of engineers worked in parallel designing robust mechanisms to give the plants and their tendrils character and enable the largest to swallow four people a night!
SFX Designer/Supervisor, Bob Thorne, comments:
“This has been a challenging, but exciting project for Artem to work on. Everything we build has to perform nightly in front of a paying live audience, be fire retardant and easy to manoeuvre on and off set.
David Farley has created some beautiful designs and we are delighted to be bringing them to life as part of such a fun and exciting production.”
With a cast including Sheridan Smith (Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, Royle Family) Paul Keating (Tommy, Closer to Heaven, Don Carlos), Alistair McGowan (Endgame, Art), Barry James (Seymour in original production) and the legendary Mike McShane (Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, Whose Line is it Anyway?) as the voice of Audrey II, the production and Audrey II have been receiving rave reviews and the show is selling out fast.
To get a glimse of our plants in action, go to www.littleshopthemusical.com and watch the VIDEO.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY…
THE EVENING STANDARD -4 stars
“Yet it is the plant, brought to life by animatronics and puppetry and voiced by Mike McShane, that inevitably dominates the show, growing over the evening from a seedling into a vegetative Gargantua that fills most of the stage!”
THE INDEPENDENT - 4 stars
“Babani has bunged serious resources into the star of the show: his plant. It’s a swanky automated puppet created by a Hollywood special effects firm. Quite a stonker it turns out to be
THE TIMES - 4 stars
“Matthew White’s exuberantly vulgar production, presided over by a repulsive botanical villain specially designed and built by Artem Ltd”
OBSERVER
“Even the vegetation has talent. The voracious plant, a relation of the stomach-bursting creature in Alien, begins by looking like an undesirable green penis, and expands into a toad variant with fangs and a character-swallowing gullet. Manipulated by the puppeteer Andy Heath, and voiced by Mike McShane, who gives it welly in the blues number, it ends by sprouting blossoms with singing faces and tendrils that wind their way into the stalls.”
THE CRITIC’S THEATRE - 4 stars
“And what of the plant? Artem Limited comes up with several animatronic marvels, from a cute little shoot to a mammoth moving plant that growls “feed me” in the voice of Mike McShane. Most perturbing. My 12 year old son enjoyed the show enormously, but eyed the cactus in his bedroom with new suspicion on his return home.” |
