little shop of horrors

Director’s Note

Featuring music in the vein of early rock and roll, doo-wop and early Motown, Little Shop of Horrors has been entertaining its audience with its rock score since its Off Broadway debut in 1982. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, writers and producers were grasping at straws trying to find ideas to make Broadway hits.

In the midst of cannibal barbers (Sweeney Todd), furry felines (Cats) and technicolor dreamcoats (I’ll let you guess), came the musical featuring a life-sized singing and dancing puppet that is out to take over the world!

Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, who redefined the animated musical movie with Disney’s The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, based Little Shop of Horrors on a 1960 low budget horror film of the same title by Roger Corman. In 1986, the musical hit the big screen and became a cult classic. This popular movie was directed by Frank Oz, and starred Rick Mornanis, Ellen Greene and Steve Martin.

This show satirizes science fiction, ‘B’ movies, musical comedy and is most notably remembered for having a singing plant that eats people. But at the heart of this satire are good people seduced by power, money and materialism. This presents the real challenge of the show: balancing the satirical, lager-than-life plot with the portrayal of human characters with which we can all relate.

The last few months have been a whirlwind as the cast and crew has not only worked on singing, dancing and humanizing this crazy story, but has also endeavored to bring the puppet, Audrey II, to life. The experience of bringing another entity to the stage and working with 4 stages of puppets, has stretched all of our creativity, presented challenges and brought more than a few laughs to rehearsals. So, sit back and enjoy as we go downtown.

 -Stephanie Dean