Druggies, Winos, and Whores Galore

There is a side of of New York, where catty teenage girls sit on the steps of the Met, eating yoghurt and gossiping, while their Abercrombie-model-esque boyfriends casually smoke a joint in Central Park. And there is the other side. The side where failed actors inject smack in broad daylight, where the whores are underage and even the news reporters have laddered tights. Where bums loiter outside innocent florists, grade-school dropouts sing stunning solos in the streets, and alien plants feed on human flesh.

Welcome to Skid Row.

For the second time this decade, my school has selected Little Shop of Horrors as their biennial musical production. Our tri-weekly rehearsals somewhat resembled a bad family drama; the insane "mother hen" director screaming herself hoarse, the bubbly music teacher hopping with excitement, and the heavily medicated wardrobe attendant frantically scrambling for her fix amongst the piles and piles of badly mismatched clothing.

Our cast, on the other hand, gradually became a family; and as soppy as that sounds, we truly were, frequently alternating between being gathered around the piano during our short breaks singing happy-clappy Broadway hits, and throwing sharp things at each other.

But, at the end of the rehearsal process, and with both my eyes still in my skull, we somehow managed to take the production from the clamorous mess that was the dress rehearsal, to a near-perfect, if slightly technically-flawed, musical. Our lead roles, played of course by the crazy redhead, the geek-gone-chic, the token gay and grumpy old man, were spectacular. As mentioned above, our eight "Ronettes" were the life and soul of the play, each of them of course typecasted.

After the minor trauma of watching several of my dear friends be eaten by a flytrap, I now intend to steer clear of the bonatical industry. And motorcycles. We shed a tear for the end of Little Shop... but the real world, it seems, is safer than Skid Row...