Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Yet the shows most charming quality is its feeling of having been put on for the hell of it.
Im sure its going to make money.
Its a dream cast of consummate pros.
But and my eyes look like hearts while I throw in this the infectious energy is pure amateur.
The exotic brings attention; attention brings fame; fame brings money and love.
But the plant only eats human flesh.
Feed me, Seymour!
as the old saying goes.
And so Seymour lets himself be coaxed into a deal with the devil.
Later, he said, I met tons of people who saw it when they were 14 or 15.
I never met anyone who saw it as an adult.
What could be cozier than a favorite cult movie, goofy as a dog in pants?
Corman had shot in two days.
Menken and Ashman, after theyd decided on 60s kitsch pastiche, wrote the musical in two months.
And when you watchLittle Shopyou can feel both the teenage enthusiasm and those initial flying rushes toward creation.
The show is nearly indestructible: Even junior-high productions cant ruin it.
So when you do lavish the show with marquee talents, it feels like superabundance.
Give him an inch, hell steal the scene.
He tickles his nipple to draw our attention to the embroidery on his dentists smock.
Suddenly, though, hell initiate the sluice.
and he swings through the Mushnik & Son flower shops door.
He steps out into an entirely new voice: twice as loud, twice as strong.
You get a sense of what kind of power hes leashing.
While Groff is intermittently keeping his light under a bushel, Tammy Blanchard is knocking her bushel over.
Every other thing in this production is a joke.
Im almost positive that Borle is actively trying to get other actors to laugh.
So what is this crushing portrait of twilight need and despair doing here?
Its a brilliant performance, but it has a slight stubbornness about it.
Theres another not-very-hidden subtext in this show.
On the one hand,Little Shopseems like icing on a cupcake nothing could be sweeter.
You sing around the house for days.
But the show is also disturbing, and not only because of Audreys bruises.
Too oftenLittle Shoplovers gloss over its racial critique, the deliberate association of alien invasion tropes with anti-black panic.
The central characters dream of white flight to the suburbs (gotta get outta here).
Musically, too, the show links race to disruption.
The choices are specific and pointed.
Menken knew what he was about.
So should a production grapple with those issues?
Mayers version doesnt; its on a nostalgia trip, interested in good vibes only.
And certainly I adored thisLittle Shop, and Id recommend it to anyone who can get in.
And then came Kingsley Leggs, a.k.a.
But surely hes the star!
We needed a little more time to applaud him.
Little Shop of Horrorsis at the Westside Theater through January 19.
