Dale O’Dell Jr. and Tobi Berman are a couple of recent transfers from New York who have found their home at Mankato Playhouse.
O’Dell plays dentist Orin Schrivello and Berman plays the Voice of Audrey II, the plant that grows and becomes the bad guy in the musical comedy “Little Shop of Horrors,” opening Feb. 9 and running for three weekends.
Before we delve into their story, let’s talk about the show itself.
“It’s one of those really fun shows where it’s very tongue in cheek, it’s a parody, it’s a spoof, but it also has a lot of layers,” said director Patrick Leigh who, despite being a busy actor, has never been a part of this musical theater staple.
He said he has loved working with Riley Krieger, who plays Seymour Krelborn, a man who is passionate about plants and flowers at a Skid Row shop and meets Audrey, a young lady who has struggled in her life. She is dating the sadistic dentist, Schrivello.
Seymour wants Audrey to be happy but gets involved in some pretty dark relationships while doing so. And that seriously must be considered when creating Seymour, Krieger said.
“The worst thing you could do is just only go for the gag, only be funny,” he said. “So, I think that just gave me a good place to start off.” But the character grows through the show.
“I want you to fall in love with the character so much that you don’t know if you want to like him or not near the end of the show because he’s doing these awful, horrible things at the end of the show.”
Audrey ends up doing things she doesn’t want to do just to survive, said Maddy Morgan. Audrey struggles from low self-esteem, but she does have charisma and charm and a good heart, she said.
Although she has seen the show performed — in fact, she saw it again the day before COVID shut down Broadway — she is working to make the role her own, while bringing in bits and pieces of performances she has seen.
“That’s how you make the character grounded and real is by adding a bit of yourself instead of trying to copy everyone else’s work,” she said.
Seymour develops the plant, Audrey II, whom he inadvertently discovers thrives on blood. The plant grows not only in size, but in importance. Soon everything Seymour does revolves around getting Audrey what it craves.
Participating in “Little Show of Horrors” also has given O’Dell what he craves. Moving here in 2020 with his spouse, O’Dell has been a fan of Mankato Playhouse productions, getting back on stage with “Cinderella.”
“Everybody here was so warm and welcoming,” he said of his Playhouse audition. “I knew that when I moved here, the only way I was really going to meet my people is if I got back into the theater, so this was just for me.”
“Little Shop” gives him an opportunity to get back into performing, he said, because he actually plays about 17 other smaller characters as well as Orin.
“It’s just so fun because I’m trying to make everybody so different,” he said. “It’s really good for me to do that.”
In addition to performing, he has been working on writing books for young adults and getting them published. He wants to create characters for marginalized teens, he said, using them as role models to help kids through tough times. Hospitality is another passion of O’Dell’s. Other than being on stage, working in hospitality is where he feels he belongs.
For Berman, who provides the voice for Audrey II, it’s an usual role. Although he’s seen as a street bum in the opening scene, most of the show will have him watching or in the booth singing as others manipulate the every-growing Audrey II plant itself.
“This is the first show that I’ve done that I’m singing, like, pop music,” he laughed. He was classically trained, and his role as the proprietor in last year’s “Assassins” at the Playhouse was more deep and “bassy,” he said.
“So, this is the first one where I get to have fun and I can rip and run and it’s not a problem,” he said.
Although a small cast, it’s mighty, including three do-wop girls who always appear to add needed lift to a scene. Even Leigh finds it hard to keep from moving when the familiar songs hit the sound system.
For the tightly knit cast, being together on stage is the opposite of the problem. It’s the solution for all that ails them. That togetherness will serve them well as they battle the goblins of a blood-thirsty plant named Audrey.