AFTER a very long hiatus, Shannon Musical Society will be back with its show Little Shop of Horrors from February 14-18.
The show will be staged at St Patrick’s Comprehensive and will be directed by Aodán Fox.
Shane Farrell is Musical Director while Karen Barrett is Choreographer.
The cast is led by Tom Barrett who is taking on the role of Seymour, a hapless florist shop worker.
When the Society first produced the show 18 years ago, Eoin Sheedy had that role, and while he is still involved this time out he plays Mr Mushnik, the owner of the florists.
The leading lady will be Olivia Parkinson, who plays Audrey. Ciarán Collins returns to the Shannon stage to portray Orin Scrivello, the nasty dentist and boyfriend of Audrey.
Rounding out the cast is Colm McGuinness, who takes on the demanding job of voicing the blood thirsty plant, Audrey II.
Speaking this week Aodán said that preparations have been going well.
“Things are going great. It’s picking up at the moment, on Sunday we marched through the show for the first time, put all the bits together.
“There are still gaps to be filled in but with three weeks to go we are in great shape. We are ramping up rehearsals now, we’re in three nights this week and Sunday.”
The show has a relatively small number of people on stage and as a result the preparations started a bit later than they would have in other years.
“With this particular show we started later than we usually would. We started in November whereas usually we would start rehearsals in the middle of September.
“We pushed it back this year, it’s a smaller cast show and we have quite a compact ensemble so there’s no need for it to be longer.
“But when Christmas was over it meant that things got intense because we wouldn’t have been as far along as other years. But with the show that it is, we are in a great place.”
He is quite confident about the show.
“We have a fantastic principal line-up and a great young, vibrant ensemble who are really adding to it. We’re going to have a great set and visually and musically it’ll be a great one, it’s up-tempo and it’s quite funny, very tongue in cheek. I think it’ll go down very well with audiences.”
Aodán hopes that Covid-19 doesn’t cause even more trouble for the Society in the coming weeks.
“The dreaded C word, we don’t talk about it! I hope to God we’re not affected, it’s still a worry, but hopefully it’ll stay away from us until we’re finished.”
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked with a number of other publications in Limerick, Cork and Galway. His first book will be published in December 2024.