Little Shop of Horrors

You might think the Edinburgh International Film Festival is all about cinema and you wouldn't be wrong, but not happy with its own Fringe and International festivals coming up in August, theatre has slipped its way into the mix. Live, Live, Cinema reimagines cult classics with live performers in front of the screen, and brings the original 1960 Little Shop of Horrors to this year's film festival. Actor Barnie Duncan spoke to The Skinny from all the way in New Zealand about the process of combining different forms of performance to make a crazy, wonderful collaboration between the stage and the screen.

For Duncan, theatre and film "are super different," though they both have actors and directors. "I come from a background of doing more live theatre than on-camera work, so I'm biased," says Duncan, "but I think theatre works on the sense of communion and film works on a sense of voyeurism in a way."

"Four weird buddies have got together to try and do this impossible thing"

When asked how much the performance then borrows from the film actors, or tries to stay away from their performance, Duncan states, "I can only answer for myself, but maybe it's the same for the rest of the cast too, in that the original actors' choices are a great starting point. I mean for accents of course but also for attitude. I guess we take the vibe of the characters and heighten them, or take their 'role' and honour that but invent something new." Each performer takes on several of the film's characters, with Duncan taking on eight roles. "Some are straight heightened imitations," he admits, but for others Duncan gives his own twist. "For the Jack Nicholson character who is addicted to pain, rather than copy him – which is just going to sound like an impersonator doing a semi-crap job – I reimagined him as Ren from Ren and Stimpy."

Of course, the combination of the two mediums provides an awful lot for the audience to look at. "There's this mad stage full of props and sound gear, and four lunatics running around with instruments coughing up all this noise," says Duncan, "but there is also a screen, and screens [are] akin to some kind of altar. We're screen kids these days, our gaze gravitates towards its omnipotent power even if we want to watch something else." So Duncan and the rest of the cast won't be upset if the audience aren't watching their every move on stage, but they will fight for the attention. "It is a funny, weird and beautiful film, and we spend all our time trying to impress you with our amazing, ambidextrous talents. What a glorious conundrum. It's the reason why so many people say they want to come back for a second viewing."

It's not just the audience who have a lot to focus on, with the performers providing the foley as well as the dialogue and singing. "A lovely thing happens," Duncan says, describing "an acting technique where the actor delivers their lines while performing an action that has nothing to do with their lines. We bend our bodies around trying to nail a sound while in the middle of a sentence about botanical horror." It sounds both confusing and impressive. "The foley is inventive and unpredictable cool things happen," is all Duncan will say.

This set-up really invites the audience into the piece, in some ways because they're sympathetic for the performers "having to climb all over ourselves and our instruments and our cluttered brains. It's like four weird buddies have got together to try and do this impossible thing for this bunch of humans one night and everyone wants it to work. There are genuine fails and genuine triumphs and the audience are with us in all of that."