Starlight Theatre
Add comment June 30th, 2008
Rock Valley College Starlight Theatre offers a superb selection of plays this summer season: Jonah, the Wiz, Little Shop of Horrors, and Thoroughly Modern Millie. We recently went to go see our two favorites, Little Shop of Horrors and Thoroughly Modern Millie, and were quite pleased with their productions!
Little Shop of Horrors stayed true to the funny, endearing play it always is. For those of you unfamiliar with the play, Seymour is a florist in an unsuccessful flower shop in a bad area of town. He grows an unusual, unique plant which he names Audrey II after his love interest and co-worker, Audrey. After countless efforts of trying to make the plant grow he finally finds the secret feeding ingredient: blood. Media attention increases the plant’s popularit throughout the country, and Seymour feels increasing pressure to get the Audrey II to continue to grow. After some incidences (we don’t want to give to much away to those of you who haven’t seen it), the play ends on a slightly depressing tone.
Our favorite roles included a great voice of the Audrey II (the blood-thirsty plant) and Orin (Audrey’s dentist boyfriend). The music was upbeat and kept our interest throughout the entire play. Overall, we really enjoyed this play and would recommend it.
Thoroughly Modern Millie is our new favorite production. Ourhigh school, Boylan Catholic, put on the show this spring. We had our first experience of this play at that time and we absolutely loved the script. Millie arrives to New York City in hopes of finding a job so that she can marry her boss to be a “modern.” Upon shortly arriving she lands a seemingly ideal job and makes quick friends with the girls who she lives with at the Hotel Priscilla. Little does she (and the rest of her hotel-mates) know that that the owner of the hotel is a part of the white slavery trade and is sending the orphan girls to China. Through her quest to find a suitable husband, she ends up finding true love and saving her friend along the way.
Starlight did a great job in casting to stay true to the characters; the voices were all perfect for their parts. The musical was fun and entertaining throughout. We especially enjoyed the songs “I’m Falling in Love with Someone” and “Muqin”. This play is one of our Starlight favorites and we are excited to see it again in its next showing later in July.
For more information of show dates and ordering tickets look at their website or call them at (815) 921-2160.
