It’s a busy month for Urban Aphrodite, who bring Roman Polanski’s classic Rosemary’s Baby to the stage this weekend, as well as this off-Broadway musical comedy classic. Audrey, the human eating plant, will be joined by the cast of this summer’s dinner theater hit Five Course Love, ZMACK’s Curtis Mabry and the band that recently backed Raina Skar at her Tribute to Queen concerts. Company founder and Little Shop director Anne James gives us a preview.
Urban Aphrodite has a couple of shows opening in November. Could you give us a preview?
One is Rosemary's Baby, which is adapted live on stage from the Roman Polanski film. We’ve turned it on its head. It’s going to be creepy and suspenseful with good video and crazy sounds. That’s November 7-8 and 14-15. We have late night shows on Saturday, so one of the cast members is going to offer him or herself up to become absolutely intoxicated and then the cast will proceed with the show, and see what happens. So somebody from Rosmeary’s Baby is going to be drunk.
David Johannson (Almost, Maine, The Learned Ladies) directs and did the adaptation. He's a film aficionado and will bring a film like quality to the show that will be creepy. There's live interaction. At one, Rosemary is trying to figure out this name from an anagram made out of Scrabble pieces and the audiences will have Scrabble pieces on their table and will be figuring things as she is on stage, too. There's going to be drink specials related to the show.
Rosemary's Baby (image: Urban Aphrodite)
Has working on the show made David darker?
(deadpans) It’s a transformation that needed to happen. He’s too nice. He’s egoless and willing to learn, One of the things we’re lacking in Shanghai is quality directors. We have a talent pool of about 20-30 actors who like to do shows by all the theater companies, which is really cool, but the directors are diminishing. That’s an issue unless people are willing to step up to the plate.
Little Shop is an off-Broadway hit from the 1980's that we're bringing to Shanghai. It’s basically about a life-eating plant from outer space that comes to dominate the earth. He does it through a guy named Seymour, who’s in love with a friend who gets knocked around a bit by her senseless boyfriend. The music is amazing, our cast is incredible and we can’t wait to bring it to Shanghai.
Who are some of the actors involved?
The whole cast of Five Course Love is coming back, so we have Julia Carey, JP Lopez and Deji Odunlami, but they’re back and still in love with each other. We also have Curt Mabry of ZMACK, he’s going to be our dentist. We have so many talented people and some newcomers as well. The interesting things is that not many people do this musical because the puppet of the plant usually takes a lot of logistics and is very expensive - you either have to rent it from the company or you can try to build one ourselves.
Our company being in China, there’s all sorts of difficulties of making this happen. Luckily have run into a guy from Hong Kong who’s going to build our puppet for us. He’s done this show before, so he can help with the manipulation and construction, so we couldn’t feel any luckier.
Little Shop of Horrors (photo: Sigourney Chin)
How does the puppet work?
The first two plants are manipulated by hand. But since the plant grows as it feeds on human beings, we have two larger puppets: one is about six feet tall and one is about nine feet tall, so it will take over the stage. Our plant has already been seen smoking and drinking. She’s only two days old, so we will see. Don’t feed the plant. Do not feed the plant.
Why perform this show?
I wanted to do this play because it fits into our mission of doing award-winning plays and musicals. It’s a small cast, so I was sure we could get the best people in Shanghai to come on board. The costumes are easily done and I just love the time period of the music - Motown, doo wop, on the street corner - and we have a live band. If anybody saw Raina’s tribute to Queen at the Pearl - that’s our band.
How is it doing the shows at The Pearl?
We've moved over to the Pearl temporarily because our home theater Sasha's is changing the second floor into a lounge, which will be more appealing to bookings and entertainment. So right now, they have to store everything in our theater. We're happy to have the Pearl as our venue. They've really bent over backwards to help us bring the quality that we need to bring and we're going to expand the stage to accommodate the dentist's office in Little Shop and the doctor's office in Rosemary's Baby. We hope that relationship will grow by showing we can sell the shows out.
Urban Aphrodite is now in its second season. How do you feel about the state of theatre in Shanghai?
We’re growing, our customer base is growing and is also shifting. When we first started, we had about 90-95 per cent expat audiences. Now we have about 20-25 per cent local audiences, which is great for us. We do want to tap into that local audiences.
What are some Urban Aphrodite's future shows?
We have a really good spring season lining up. We want to do a play Venus in Fur that’s based on another film by Roman Polanski, it’s a highly erotic play dealing with adult themes. It's a two-person play and that’s all I’m going to say about it. For our family show, we're planning on doing Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat.
// Rosemary's Baby: Nov 7-8 and 14-15, 8-10pm, RMB200-220. Late night shows on Nov 8 & 15, 10.30pm - late. The Pearl, tickets.
// Little Shop of Horrors: Nov 20, 22-23, 9pm (family matinee: Nov 22, 2pm), RMB200-220. The Pearl, tickets.
****WIN!!!!*****
We have a pair of tickets to Little Shop of Horrors to give away. Simply e-mail win@urbanatomy.com with the subject ‘Little Shop’ by November 17 for your chance to win.
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