Reviews

Little Shop of Horrors is on everyone’s favourite list of cult musicals. The 60s spoof of the horror movie genre in which an innocuous plant grows to an enormous size when it’s fed human blood, was Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s first hit musical and one of their best.

This is another theatrical ‘scoop’ for the Ensemble. It’s a formidable piece of writing that demands robust direction and dynamic performances. Director Susanna Dowling and her cast have achieved both.

From the first surprising sentence, to the last touching moment, this production is gutsy and passionate, the characters unaffectedly authentic and brutally honest, the direction tight and the pace immaculately controlled.

Justin Fleming has a knack for this.  For the Australian stage, he’s translated and masterfully adapted Moliere’s Tartuffe and The School for Wives, and here reworks Moliere’s Les Femmes Savantes. 

Directed by Griffin’s Lee Lewis, it’s a co-production with the Bell Shakespeare Company, with five powering performances delightfully squeezed onto the modest Griffin stage.

Recess! is essentially a string of "Teacher, Teacher!" jokes, with a fragment of storyline, turned into a musical. Presumably originally aimed at Middle America, it is an inoffensive, pleasant little comedy, intended to have broad appeal.

Phoenix's young cast consists of high school students from Years 7 to 12, who bring a broad range of experience to this show.