Prescott Park Arts Festival unveils 'Little Shop of Horrors' as summer 2023 musical

PORTSMOUTH — The Prescott Park Arts Festival will present "Little Shop Of Horrors" in summer 2023. Festival leaders announced the musical Thursday, months earlier than usual, making visions of warm summer nights dance in heads on a cold first night of December.

The festival unveiled its 2023 show choice at a party at The View at Pepperell Cove in Kittery Point, Maine.

"We are excited, so excited to announce the summer musical," the arts festival's Executive Director Courtney Perkins said. "We're doing it earlier this year than usual. This will give us a longer runway to promote the musical in more, fun ways and engage with the community."

Perkins gave the example of the festival's entry in the annual Gingerbread Contest organized by the Portsmouth Historical Society, which depicts the "Little Shop of Horrors" and was kept under wraps until the festival's announcement. And with the early reveal, the festival's tree at Strawbery Banke's Candlelight Stroll can now have a "Little Shop of Horrors" theme.

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Securing the rights as soon as you can is what's actually important because it's so competitive," Perkins explained. Once the festival had the rights to produce "Little Shop of Horrors," why not announce it and begin promoting it as soon as possible, Perkins said.

Perkins noted "Little Shop" has a history with the festival, having been produced in 1987 and 2001, but this is the first time the Broadway revival version will be done in the park.

"As someone who grew up in the '90s, with a steep musical theater background, it's long been a favorite of mine, and a favorite of many," Perkins said. "It's on the top list of musical theater shows. We'll be doing the Broadway revival version."

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The choice was also guided by what the festival has heard from its audience.

"We're responsive to our audience who have told us they want family-friendly, but not just kid-specific shows," Perkins said. "We are thinking about what we're hearing. There's enough camp content in this for the kids, but enough content for adults, too. We're taking a balanced approach to family-friendly."

Directors, choreographer of the summer musical announced

The festival also announced Tom Alsip will direct the summer musical, Kathy Fink will be the production's musical director and Mary Beth Marino will be the musical's choreographer. All three performed the same roles for the festival's production of "Footloose" this summer.

"That's our core artistic team," Perkins said, noting the festival is beginning immediately to build out the rest of the production team.

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Alsip is an assistant professor of Theater and Dance and director of the musical theater program at the University of New Hampshire.

"He's a delight to work with and is an excellent collaborator across different groups of people, from the actors to the technical staff to the administrative staff," Perkins said. "He gets the best out of everyone ... We're very fortunate to continue our relationship with him."

Alsip first saw "Little Shop" at 9 or 10 years old in Mobile, Alabama, when his father performed the role of Mr. Mushnik in a community theater production.

"It's got this built-in energy to it that's great. I've always wanted to do it," Alsip said. "I love all the zaniness in it, but I want to take it to the second level for this production. I want to find all the heart that's in there, too."

In his second year directing at Prescott Park, Alsip said he loves working with the festival. "For me, it's about the community, the outreach. Theater requires an audience both pragmatically and philosophically," he said. "Prescott Park, in its culture and energy, does it more successfully than any I've worked with."

Fink said the Broadway revival version of the musical has "much more instrumentation, sax, trumpet, and more harmonies. It's a more interesting version of the show."

A St. Thomas Episcopal Church administrator, Fink of Dover also works for the UNH musical theater program, on high school musical programs and teaches piano. She loves to perform for and be involved in the festival because "I love to play music in one of the Seacoast's most beautiful places with wonderful musicians and performers."

On the value of the arts festival, "There's something truly magical about being at the park, playing for all ages and all demographics. I can look down from the stage and see a family with a picnic basket enjoying the show," she said. "It's access to art, which is really critical and important if we're going to foster the next generation of audience. A child might come for their first experience of theater, next they might go to a camp, next they might take a lesson, and then they're off on an audition."

At the reveal party Thursday, John Tabor, chairman of the festival's board of directors, spoke to the room of sponsors and supporters.

"I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. If not for you, the people who supported us in 2020, when we didn't have a season, we could not have come back all the way for 80,000 people in 2022," Tabor said noting the financial dilemma the pandemic shutdown presented for the festival, which presented a scaled back season in 2021 and returned with a full slate of performances and concerts this summer.

After Mariah Morgan, a member of the festival's board of directors and principal of Stout Heart, unveiled the festival's choice for its next musical, longtime Seacoast performer Kevin Mahaney of Dover and Tia Apicella of Newton, accompanied by Fink, sang "Suddenly Seymour," a song from the musical.

"Little Shop of Horrors" will have a cast of approximately 12 actors and one to two puppeteers, Perkins said. The festival plans to announce audition times on social media and on its website at prescottpark.org next week with auditions taking place in the new year.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: 'Little Shop of Horrors' coming to Prescott Park of Portsmouth in 2023