SHANNON Musical Society has announced plans to hold what will be its first show since 2020 on the week of February 12-18 of next year.
The Society’s production will be Little Shop of Horrors, which it had planned to perform some months ago but decided to cancel due to continuing concerns about Covid-19.
Director of the show will be Aodán Fox and he said they are looking forward to getting down to business once more.
“Basically the new committee was elected and they decided that they’d continue with Little Shop of Horrors, which we were supposed to do in February just gone.
“We’ve a slightly new production team in that our musical directors Carmel Griffin has stepped down and Shane Farrell is our new Musical Director.
“Shane is from the Tuam area and he’d be well known from Operation Transformation. He’s just after winning a national AIMS award as best musical director for a production of Little Shop of Horrors that he did in Galway. We’re very lucky to get him.”
Choreographer will be Karen Barrett and Martin McNelis will be technical manager.
“Some of the parts will have to be recast because some of the cast members aren’t available, but for the most part the principal roles that we have cast will remain in place and those that aren’t, we’ll recast those as we go.
“We hope to start rehearsals around late October, maybe early November and we’ll be canvassing hard for new members,” Aodán added.
It will be their first show for three years. “The last show we did was the Irish premier of Shrek the Musical in February 2020. We finished it mid February, just a few weeks before the lockdown began, we were very lucky.”
They had preparatory work for Little Shop of Horrors earlier this year, but in many ways they are back to square one now.
“We had a bit done, a bit of the legwork done. But we’ll be coming in with a fresh start, there are a couple of versions of Little Shop of Horrors and we’re doing the newer Broadway version, which has bigger orchestrations than the one we were doing.
“We were doing the smaller orchestra version with Covid restrictions in mind we wanted to keep the orchestra as small as possible, but now with restrictions eased we can go a bit bigger with it. We’re hoping to do the new version which has more orchestrations and a slightly bigger sound.”
He hopes that it will be quite memorable, given it’ll be their first show in so long.
“We’re hoping to come back with a bit of a bang. It’s a great show, it’s a fun show, one for all the family, it always gets the kids interested, there’s a lot of fun and energy in it.”
The level of interest in the Shannon Musical Society’s annual production is generally massive, with sold out shows by no means unusual.
“We have great support from the local community and it’s usually the one of the highlights of the year. As you’d be aware there’s not that much live theatre in the town, but Muse Productions will be doing a musical as well, they’ll be doing Our House in November and then we’ll be doing Little Shop in February.
“It’s great for the people of Shannon to get live theatre back. People look forward to it every year and there are people who’ve been going to the annual musical for many, many years.
“Fingers crossed we’ll be able to get back.”
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.