Little Shop of Horrors

Little Shop of Horrors – Porchlight Music Theatre – Biograph Theater – Through Dec. 13, 2026

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I’ve now seen the designer run, tech rehearsal and official opening of this production, from workout duds and a piano in a rehearsal studio to costumes, wigs, a lively orchestra, a full set and actual sound effects, as opposed to someone at the director’s table saying ring-a-ling in lieu of a bell when a door opened.

Also, don’t be scared, but I swear that Audrey II (the person-eating plant from outer space, in case you’ve been living in the Himalayas the past 65 years) has actually grown in the process.

According to the Natural History Museum website, “there are currently around 630 species of carnivorous plant known to science.” They are divided into five categories – Snap Traps, Pitfall Traps, Adhesive Traps, Suction Traps and Snare Traps. I would guess that Audrey II is a snap trap but it might be a combination or a different kind altogether, as this list is based on known, earth species.

Spoiler alert – Audrey II is really a puppet. I have a puppet thing, but not a fetish. (Certainly not like Woogie’s shoe fetish in There’s Something About Mary.) I’ve seen Avenue Q multiple times and one year attended the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which almost took me in the opposite direction, as if Pennywise had shape-shifted from a clown to a puppet.

Anyway, a shout out to Josh Bernaski for his work manipulating Audrey II in this show. As someone remarked to me – it must be awfully hot in there.

As is the norm, Audrey II’s off-stage voice is performed by someone else, in this case Juwon Tyrel Perry, who, thanks to some pre-show negotiations with Alan Mencken, gets to show his face and treat us, as a form of encore, to the Oscar-nominated song, not normally in the stage version of the show, Mean Green Mother from Outer Space.

Steve McDonagh, a foil of sorts as the shop owner Mr. Mushnik, not to be confused with the shop owner Mr. Maraczek from She Loves Me, provides the expert glue from start to finish.

Adam Fane, playing 10 parts, with different voices and different physical presences, once again brings unending comedic energy, especially as Orin Scrivello, D.D.S. Normally, I might say that he steals the show, but that’s tough when the leads present unforgettable performances.

Alina Taber honors Ellen Greene, the revered, original stage and movie musical Audrey, while bringing her own interpretive touches to the role, including one walk-off reaction that brings a roar from the audience. Coincidentally, Greene’s father was a dentist, though hopefully not a sadist.

In the other iconic role, Andrew Linden, as Seymour Krelborn, is as big a nebbish as you’d ever want to see, until he isn’t. As Agatha Christie once wrote – “everyone is a potential murderer.”

Because everything old is new again, Little Shop has its own, updated version of the Greek Chorus, the Street Urchins, played here to the hilt (not Hilty, as in Megan, who played Audrey in the 2018 Broadway Center Stage production) by Kiana J. Beverly, Donnalesly Fondjo and Aneesah Jemei, with voices and dance moves that would amaze the ancients, just as they thrilled today’s audience.

This is the best stage version of Little Shop I’ve seen. I heartily recommend that you buy a ticket and plant yourself in the audience.

Little Shop of Horrors – Porchlight Music Theatre – Designer Run – October 24, 2026

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While watching the designer run for Porchlight’s upcoming production of Little Shop of Horrors, it struck me that there were several similarities to the movie Gremlins that hadn’t previously occurred to me. Spoiler alert: you already know all this.

In Little Shop, the plant (Audrey II) is purchased in a market from a Chinese merchant. In Gremlins, the Mogwai (Gizmo) is purchased from a Chinatown shopkeeper.

In Little Shop, the problems start when Seymour feeds the plant. In Gremlins, feeding the animals after midnight starts the havoc.

In Little Shop, the plant’s reproduction exacerbates the problem. In Gremlins, the same happens.

Joe Dante directed Gremlins. Joe Dante started his career with Roger Corman, who directed the original Little Shop movie.

A few words about designer runs from an article on TimeLine Theatre’s website. It’s “a complete run of the entire play that everyone in attendance accepts in advance is not going to be good.” WRONG. This one was a blast, including some interesting off stage goings on involving a large carnivorous plant that you don’t get to see from the audience in the actual run.

“Given that it is the first time the actors have an audience, there is always a need to defuse the situation for them – to remind them that everyone understands they are about to witness a train wreck.” WRONG AGAIN. No humans, plants or trains were harmed in this designer run and the actors, and the few lucky attendees, had a great time. I hope the actors don’t tone down any of their hamming it up in the upcoming performances. It was FUN.

The show opens at the Biograph Theater on November 4, but I hope to report more before then, after I see the last tech rehearsal, when I’ll be a plant in the audience.

Little Shop of Horrors – Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre – March 15, 2026

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The only cast member from the 2018 production of Little Shop of Horrors I saw, who also was in this year’s Marriott version, was Lorenzo Rush, Jr. Given that Lorenzo perfectly gives voice to the person-eating plant Audrey II, I’m guessing that he has a repeating gig for life, at one theater after another, if he wants it, given the everlasting popularity of this fun-loving romp.

Little Shop is in a select group of movies that have become musicals and then movie musicals. I add Hairspray and The Producers to that short, great list (but not Mean Girls, because I would never admit to seeing any version of it, as much as I love Tina Fey).

I would have loved to be in the room when Howard Ashman took a Roger Corman movie and wrote the book and lyrics for a musical version of Little Shop. He, and everyone around him, must have had a great time.

I always wonder how decisions are made regarding character names. The wonderful chorus of Crystal, Ronnette and Chiffon is obvious, but what about Audrey? When Corman picked that name, he couldn’t have known that Ashman would later rhyme it with tawdry in the lyrics of The Meek Shall Inherit. Our good fortune.

And what about Orin Scrivello, D.D.S., played to the hilt, along with several other characters, by Andrew Mueller? My rampant curiosity led me to discover that scrivello is actually a word meaning, according to Merriam-Webster, an elephant’s tusk of a small size commonly used for making billiard balls. Tusk – incisor tooth – dentist – coincidence?

There were other welcome, familiar faces in the cast, for example Jackson Evans, always a treat sharing the stage with a puppet, like the time I saw him in 2014 in Avenue Q. And Mark David Kaplan, set to receive the Guy Adkins Award from Porchlight Music Theatre in May at Chicago Sings Broadway’s British Invasion.

Little Shop of Horrors – Drury Lane Theater – October 14, 2018

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“Feed me.” That’s all you really need to know about the plot of a show that only runs two hours, including intermission, during which excellent chocolate chip cookies were available for purchase.

The play (based on the 1960 movie) originated Off Off-Broadway in 1982.  I believe there have to be three Offs before its birthplace is considered to be outside the state of New York.

Music and lyrics are by Menken and Ashman (his brilliant dark side) – The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin – that’s all you need to know about that.

Lorenzo Rush, Jr., who is magnificently omnipresent in Chicagoland theater, as Audrey II. You hear, and love, but don’t see him until he comes out for a bow at the end of the show wearing a t-shirt that says Voice of Audrey II. He would make Levi Stubbs proud, although I was disappointed that the play does not include the song Mean Green Mother From Outer Space, written for the 1986 movie version, and sung by Stubbs of The Four Tops. I almost saw Stubbs in concert in 1968, but he was sick so I wound up seeing The Three Tops.

The 1960, very campy original, replete with malapropisms, non-musical film of The (later dropped) Little Shop of Horrors was, in part, a Dragnet takeoff, narrated by Sgt. Joe Fink, shot by Roger Corman on a budget of $30,000, in two days, using sets that had been left standing from A Bucket of Blood. And one of the actors was a young Jack Nicholson, in a three and a half minute scene, as the masochistic dental patient played by Bill Murray in the 1986 Frank Oz version of the movie.

I’ve seen people eat people in Sweeney Todd, and plants from outer space kill people in The Day of the Triffids, but none of them leave you smiling like a hungry man-eating plant in a flower shop.