Little Shop of Horrors

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.