"Little Shop of Horrors" opens Oct. 2 at OHIO Lancaster

The first time A. Victor Jones staged “Little Shop of Horrors” at Ohio University Lancaster, the hardest part was not the singing plant. It was getting the plant to Lancaster.

The plant is the whole problem. Audrey II, the carnivorous flytrap that arrives in a Skid Row flower shop and quickly begins making demands, is one of the show’s central characters. But unlike most roles, Audrey II can’t simply be played by an actor. The character is brought to life through a series of puppets that grow throughout the two acts, creating one of the biggest challenges for companies staging the show: finding or building multiple larger-than-life puppets capable of bringing the hungry plant to life.

When Jones first produced the show years ago, the puppets came from Cincinnati, where the conservatory rented them to theater companies across the region. But the cost of shipping the puppets was more than the production could justify. So Jones borrowed a pickup truck and made the trip himself, ultimately hauling a car-sized plant in pieces in the back of the truck.

“I just remember being frightened about not making it back,” Jones said.

Thankfully, he did.

Jones, producing artistic director of the OHIO Lancaster theater program and an associate professor, is staging the show again more than a decade later in Wagner Theatre at Brasee Hall. This time the puppets arrive two weeks before opening, rented through the licensing company, so the cast can rehearse inside them.

There are four of them, and they grow. The first sits on a shelf in the flower shop. The second is carried by the actor playing the show's protagonist Seymour and moves in his arms. By the third, the plant has taken over the floor of the shop and has an actor inside it. The fourth takes two people.

The solution to staffing all that is one of the more elegant things about this production. Jones double cast Seymour and Audrey, the two leads. On any given night, the pair not performing is inside the plant.

The set they are performing on is new territory. In more than 16 years at OHIO Lancaster, Jones had never built a turntable, the revolving stage floor familiar to anyone who has seen “Hamilton” or “Hadestown.” This fall he built one. It rides on roughly 50 swiveling wheels and is divided into three wedges, each holding a different scene. Instead of crews pushing set pieces on and off between numbers, the floor turns and the next scene is already standing.

“It’s a labor of love, and I’m just so proud that it works,” he said.

Eight students are in the cast, joined by three community members playing the show’s urchins. For the students, the production is coursework. They are enrolled in acting, design and stage management practicums, and the show is what those courses produce. Jones designed the set, and the students built it under his supervision. The same people the audience sees on stage are running the light board from the wings when they are not in a scene. Two of them are appearing in only their second college production.

Rehearsals began the second week of August, three weeks before classes started, to make room for an unusually full semester. For the first time in Jones’ memory, OHIO Lancaster will stage three full productions between August and December. “Little Shop of Horrors” runs Oct. 2-10, followed by “The Sound of Music” as the holiday production, marking the fifth year the campus has collaborated with the Garret Players and the Lancaster Playhouse. 

Before both of those, on Sept. 18, the program will take the play "Right Before I Go," to Columbus. The play, which brings to life the last words written in letters by individuals lost to suicide, was staged last April on OHIO Lancaster's campus. Audience members from Columbus came to see it and invited the company to perform it at the Van Fleet Theatre in the Columbus Performing Arts Center, for one night only at 7 p.m. The performance is donation based, with a suggested donation of $10, and proceeds cover licensing, travel and production costs. Licensed psychologists and therapists will lead a discussion before the performance and a talkback afterward. Last spring the students met the playwright, Stan Zimmerman, whose television credits include “The Golden Girls” and “Gilmore Girls.” According to Jones, time with a writer whose work has run on network television is not a standard part of an undergraduate semester anywhere, and for this cast it came attached to a play they were already performing.

“I knew the students would like the show, but I also wanted to give them something meatier, something a little more pop, that they would love to do,” Jones said of choosing the show.

The scale of the semester speaks to the strength and momentum of the program. OHIO Lancaster theater is sustained through the support of its audiences and community, with ticket sales and donations helping fund each production and create opportunities for the next.

“Everybody who buys a ticket or donates helps move it forward for the next cast,” Jones said.

Jones has been at OHIO Lancaster since 2010 and describes the work in terms familiar to anyone who has helped lead a small, close-knit program.

“I’m pretty much a one-man band,” he said. He builds the sets, directs the vocals, conducts the orchestra and teaches the acting and musical theater courses. He traces it back to a childhood of piano lessons, voice lessons, choir practice and play practice, and to parents who drove him to all of it. He directed church plays before he assistant directed in high school.

“It’s been nothing but a reward all along the way,” he said.

As for the show itself, Jones has been attached to it since he was a college student, and he knows he is not alone. “Little Shop of Horrors” is a beloved musical with a strong following, drawn by the score by Alan Menken, the 1986 film with Rick Moranis and Steve Martin and the pleasure of watching a puppet the size of a car eat somebody.

“Little Shop of Horrors” runs Oct. 2-4 and Oct. 8-10 in Wagner Theatre at Brasee Hall, with evening performances at 7 p.m. and matinees at 2 p.m. on Oct. 4 and Oct. 10. Tickets are $20 plus fees, with reserved seating, and are on sale now at our.show/k92twlvkhp. The production runs about two hours and 15 minutes. Jones describes the show as PG-13 and encourages families to read up on it before bringing younger children.