BWW INTERVIEWS: Matthew White, Director Of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

Hi Matthew, and welcome to BWW:UK. Are you in rehearsal at the moment?

Just finished for the morning!

And when do you go out on tour?

This week. We go up to the Curve at Leicester, which is exciting because it's a new venue. This is the second leg of our UK tour.

And you've kept much of the cast from the first leg.

Yes - we've got a few new people in the company, so we've got a new Mushnik, and one of the three girls is new.

It must be nIce To keep the company together like that.

Yes, it is nice. It makes life a lot easier for all of us, because we've all got a very strong working relationship. The nature of the show is that it works really well when the scenes are snappy and everyone's bouncing off one another.

And where else do you go on the tour?

Inverness, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Tunbridge Wells, Woking...it's a mixture of quite enormous venues, like the Everyman, and smaller ones. We have to adjust the set accordingly.

But you must have done that already when you moved from the Menier into the West End.

We did have to rethink it, but our producer David [David Babani] chooses the venue carefully to suit the production. We had two venues in town, and they were both nicely intimate.

Are you allowed to have a favourite number?

I'm very attached to most of it. But I do love the part where the plant starts to speak, and the whole Feed Me number. Damian Humbley [playing Seymour] and Clive Rowe [as the voice of Audrey II] do that part to perfection. It's a fabulous song, and that's a real highlight for me. I also love Audrey's final scene, because I think that's beautifully written.

I think that sometimes comes as a shock to people who are used to the big happy ending from the film...

Yes, though they did film it originally! I looked it up on YouTube, and it's a big, epic, apocalyptic ending for her. But I don't think that went down too well with American test audiences as it wasn't quite Hollywood enough, so they had to re-shoot.

And you're back at the Menier again soon.

Yes, I'm coming back to do Sweet Charity over Christmas, starring Tamzin Outhwaite. We've also got Josefina Gabrielle and Tiffany Graves on board, so that's really exciting, and we're just putting the rest of the jigsaw together now.

Little Shop Of Horrors is touring the UK now. Sweet Charity is currently booking at the Menier Chocolate Factory.

 

 

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