A Conversation with Brent Hill

Interview with a Stage Actor

Interview02

Following a tour which has taken them to Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra to date – the Australian cast of Little Shop of Horrors have recently begun a short season at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) Playhouse.

During a recent media call at the venue, I was able to grab a few minutes to speak with Brent Hill. Not only does he take on the lead role of Seymour, but also juggles this role with voicing the plant Audrey II. You can read the full transcript of my interview below:


With regards to voicing the two characters on stage simultaneously, how do you manage to do it?

Black magic! I don’t know… its just kind of happened really. We worked really hard during rehearsals and we had to be very exact and diligent working with Dash who is inside the plant to create the reality of that. The hardest thing is training the voice to do it. Seymour is kind of light, tenor and clean as possible, and then Audrey really kind of down deep in my throat. And yeah, and it doesn’t make it tricky. I always thought Audrey II would be the harder voice, but its not, I think Seymour is. The more the body gets tired as you go throughout the week, its harder to hit those lighter, tender notes.

What’s impressive to me is that when you have someone voicing two characters onstage at the same time, they can sometime break the illusion that there are two different characters. Especially with your voice, you managed to do it perfectly (In the snippet I saw).

I don’t know about perfectly, but I certainly hope we get it close. We don’t want to hide it, because I think the second we hide it people can question that, it looks and feels weird. So we’re simply just trying to make a thing of not trying to hide it but not trying to show it – and kind of staying in the grey area. But yeah, its all theatre magic, and it just happens.

So what do you think makes this show one worth seeing?

The music, the wonderful people involved, the score, the story… the story is quite faustian, its quite Elizabethan, its a fable, a moral story. But for me its always been the music, the music’s fantastic, its phenomenal. What Andrew Worboys as a musical arranger and musical director is sexy, its hot… yeah, its real great. And I think the audiences, people who have seen the movie or are familiar with the show, I think they will get a kick out of it as its been a long time since seeing it. And then people who haven’t seen the film, they get a kick out of it as well. But we have a lot of fun, and its great.

Why do you think The Little Shop of Horrors has been successful for so many decades?

It has kind of a cult status. I think a lot of it is because of the talent of the writers Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, who then went on to do the Disney Renaissance. But Little Shop of Horrors hits all those tropes, has got character archetypes that we understand, and it plays around with them – swerves them. It also explores really dark themes like murder and domestic abuse, but in an explorative, interesting way. Its a real merge of darkness with light.

What advice do you have for those looking to get into theatre?

I think that you should follow your joy, follow your passion, follow something that makes you happy. And if it does, than do that. I think that a lot of people will tell you what you can’t do, and the only person that can tell you what you can or can’t is you. So if you love doing something, do it.

Thank you very much for your time, and good luck for tonight!


Tickets to see Little Shop of Horrors in the QPAC Playhouse are priced at $77.40 – $112.40 each, with the price dependent on session preference, seating preference and concession/student status. For more information and to book tickets, visit the QPAC websiteor contact their box office.

Little Shop of Horrors is being presented by Luckiest Productions and Tinderbox Productions. Following the Brisbane season, it will be headed to the Roslyn Packer Theatre in Sydney and His Majesty’s Theatre in Perth.

Sam
Sam
Founder of The Otaku's Study. I have been exploring this labyrinth of fandom these last fifteen years, and still nowhere close to the exit yet. Probably searching for a long time to come.

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