New Four Corners Musical Theatre Company production a mix of gore, comedy and music

As the musical theater company he was brought to Farmington to establish prepares to kick off its fifth season this weekend, Randy West takes pride in the organization’s accomplishments and the way it has been embraced by the community since 2019.

But one thing he says he can’t take credit for is the company’s habit of performing a show with a horror theme every October shortly before Halloween, a tradition that developed largely by accident.

The Four Corners Musical Theatre Company will open a two-week run of “Little Shop of Horrors” on Thursday, Oct. 19 at the Farmington Civic Center. This will mark the third year in a row the company has opened its new season with a horror-themed production — it performed “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” in 2021 and “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” in 2022 — and West now recognizes that audiences have come to expect it as a Halloween staple in Farmington, even going so far as to quiz him about what shows he has planned for the future.

West said he has grown to like doing the horror shows because they pull a different demographic than the company’s usual fare, thus generating a different energy. But that wasn’t really what he was expecting back in 2021 when his plans to perform “Camelot” — the show he had chosen for that year’s season opener — fell through because he couldn’t secure the rights to stage it.

As a replacement, someone suggested “Rocky Horror,” West said, noting that a Durango, Colorado-based theater company that had been performing it every Halloween for several years recently had lost the lease on its building and had been left homeless at that time. West quickly secured the rights to the show that has remained a cult favorite for most of its 50-plus years of existence.

Last year, he doubled down on the horror theme by producing “Sweeney Todd,” delivering perhaps the best-received shows the Four Corners Musical Theatre Company has staged over the last four years. West brought in a big-name cast for that show, including Broadway veteran Anne Runolfsson, who played Carlotta in “Phantom of the Opera” and was featured in the NBC-TV drama “The Blacklist.”

“I had so many people after ‘Sweeney Todd’ come up to me who said, ‘I brought my child to see the show, and she now loves musical theater because of the level of storytelling in (the show),’” West said, attributing that characteristic to one of the show’s creators, the late Stephen Sondheim. “But that’s good news for us, and now we’ve fallen into doing a Halloween show.”

This year, with expectations continuing to grow, West’s choice for a horror production was “Little Shop of Horrors,” the 1982 off-Broadway musical comedy production based on a 1960 Roger Corman horror film that was remade in 1986, serving as a comedy vehicle for Rick Moranis and Steve Martin.

“Little Shop” was the obvious choice, West said, given its macabre plot that centers on a house plant that develops a capacity for speech — and a taste for human blood — during a solar eclipse. The Four Corners Musical Theatre Company production of the show will open just five days after San Juan County found itself smack in the middle of the path of annularity of the Oct. 14 solar eclipse, and West couldn’t resist taking advantage of those circumstances.

Those celestial fireworks may be the hook for this production, but West isn’t relying on just them to make audiences happy. He again has assembled an impressive cast to kick off the new season, with Amari Lewis, Antoinette Nebinger and Koko Blanton performing as Chiffon, Crystal and Ronnette, the three neighborhood girls who are featured essentially as a Greek chorus in the play, providing commentary on the actions of the protagonists through a mix of early 1960s rock ‘n’ roll, do-wop and rhythm-and-blues tunes.

West raved about their vocals, explaining that he was lucky to land them for this production because it is being staged during a time of year when all three actresses happened to find themselves idle. From the first time he heard Lewis, Nebinger and Blanton sing together, West said he knew he had something special.

“I don’t now that I’ve ever heard ‘Little Shop’ sound tighter,” he said. “The three of them singing together, it a really exciting component of the show.”

Kit Asfeldt, who was part of the Four Corners Musical Theatre Company production of “Rocky Horror,” stars as Seymour in this show, while Alyssa Flowers, who starred in the company’s season-ending production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” this summer, takes on the role of Audrey. Other company veterans featured in the cast are Sean McCall as Mr. Mushnik and Matthew Aaron as Orin, the dentist with a disturbing fondness for S&M.

But the real star of any “Little Shop” production tends to be the plant itself, which grows to gargantuan proportion by show’s end. West tapped his longtime friend Randell Rhotten to serve as the mature plant’s voice.

“You have to have a certain quality of voice, and Randy’s got it,” he said.

West said this production also will feature plants from a “Little Shop” national tour, one of which takes three people to operate. Bryan Songy, a veteran of the company’s productions of “Joseph” and “Sweeney Todd,” is the actor inside the largest version of the plant, West said, noting that his experience as a puppeteer made him a natural choice for that role.

“You forget it’s a puppet with an actor in it, he’s so good,” West said.

While there are plenty of laughs in “Little Shop,” the show unquestionably has a dark, violent side – hence its status in the horror genre. But West said any Four Corners Musical Theatre Company regular who is worried about that subject matter needn’t worry, especially if they enjoyed last year’s Halloween production.

“People ask about the gore, but ‘Sweeney Todd’ is gorier,” he said.

West said his own family has a tradition of watching Abbot and Costello horror films this time of year, and he has come to appreciate the impact that the mix of comedy and horror have on each other.

“I think the scary thing makes the funny thing funnier,” he said.

The Four Corners Musical Theatre Company production of “Little Shop of Horrors” opens at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 19 and runs through Saturday, Oct. 21 and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 22 at the Farmington Civic Center, 200 W. Arrington St. in downtown Farmington. The production continues Oct. 26-29. Tickets are $24 and $28 and can be purchased by calling 505-599-1148 or visiting fmtn.org/shows.

Mike Easterling can be reached at 505-564-4610 or measterling@daily-times.com. Support local journalism with a digital subscription: http://bit.ly/2I6TU0e.

This article originally appeared on Farmington Daily Times: Farmington musical theater company will open "Little Shop of Horrors"