'Little Shop' goes big time
BY CHRISTINE DOLEN

Its cast is smallish, its source a schlocky 1960 Roger Corman horror flick shot in two days. It got started in a tiny Manhattan theater, and its original carnivorous character was built in the designer's apartment. But don't be fooled by its title: There is nothing little or modest about Little Shop of Horrors. Especially now. Remember Little Shop? The musical spoof by Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman recounts the story of a Skid Row plant shop clerk named Seymour who pines fruitlessly for a tender-hearted, dim-bulb fellow worker named Audrey. Things change when Seymour discovers a chatty, bloodthirsty plant he dubs the Audrey II, in honor of his bleached-blond beloved. Soon, things turn mock-ugly -- and very, very bloody. It's a Faustian tale set to a doo-wop/rock beat.

This summer, the 1982 musical -- one of the most frequently produced all over America, a show that lasted 2,209 performances in its original Off-Broadway run -- is finally going to Broadway as an $8 million production. But first, South Florida gets to (as the ads put it) ``see it before it eats Broadway alive!''

With previews beginning Wednesday and a gala opening on May 16, a top-of-the-line revival of Little Shop is, in many ways, the most attention-getting thing ever to hit Actors' Playhouse in Coral Gables.

'Our technical director says, `This is The Big Shop of Horrors,' '' says Barbara Stein, the theater's tireless executive director, a woman whose smile belies the pressure of fitting a Broadway-caliber production into the Miracle Theatre's space.

It's big enough that the budget for the production in South Florida is around $500,000 -- $1 million if you add in the cost of the four small-to-enormous versions of the show's plant -- with Actors' Playhouse picking up $300,000 to $350,000 of the amount, Stein says.

Director Connie Grappo, who assisted playwright-lyricist-director Ashman on the original Little Shop, says the revival is going for a ``. . . low-tech feel, with its silliness and cultural references and youthful irreverence. It still has a crude downtown sensibility.''

But Broadway-style ''simplicity'' doesn't come cheaply.

The set is a more compact version of the one that will wind up on Broadway, but designer Scott Pask (whose credits include Broadway's Urinetown) did both. Lion King lighting designer Donald Holder has, similarly, done a less elaborate version of his Broadway design for Actors' Playhouse; ditto for T. Richard Fitzgerald's sound design. Laura Bauer's playful period Broadway costumes will also be used here.

`WET SEATS'

The cast is an eight-person dream team of Broadway and Off-Broadway talent.

Hunter Foster, hailed for his performance as doomed idealist Bobby Strong in Urinetown, is nebbishy Seymour; Alice Ripley, a Tony Award nominee for Side Show, is the much-abused Audrey; Lee Wilkof, who originated the role of Seymour 21 years ago, now plays plant shop owner Mr. Mushnik; Reg Rogers, an Obie Award-winner for The Dazzle Off-Broadway, is Audrey's ''semi-sadist'' dentist-beau Orin; Dioni Michelle Collins, Haneefah Wood and Moeisha McGill are the girl-group ''Greek'' chorus of (respectively) Crystal, Ronette and Chiffon; and Broadway musical veteran Billy Porter is the voice of Audrey II.

The man inside the plant is its designer and master puppeteer, Martin P. Robinson; he's the guy who created the original Audrey II, a hybrid of a Venus Flytrap and a shark, in his apartment. Time and fame change things: Robinson's redesigned plants were built by the Jim Henson Company (Robinson won Emmys for playing Snuffleupagus, Telly Monster, Slimey the worm and the Yip-Yip Martians on Sesame Street, so they know him at Henson).

Robinson, who says he used a ''very saturated'' color palette, a bit of 21st-century technology and simple mechanics wedded to more ambitious ideas this time, knows exactly what he wants the new Audrey II to do.

''The big one has to be big enough to ultimately eat the entire cast and scare people,'' says a grinning Robinson, who found a way to make the plant rise up, extend out over the first few rows of the audience and grab people. ``I want wet seats! They should be [covered in] plastic.''

He sees the famous plant as ``. . . a metaphor for whatever you want most in life. She takes your deepest desires and turns them against you. She's the ultimate survivor.''

And very attention-getting.

''Don't go onstage with children, dogs and man-eating plants,'' says choreographer Kathleen Marshall, riffing on W.C. Fields' famous quote about things adult actors should avoid. ``We hope Audrey II takes direction and doesn't upstage the actors.''

Director Grappo -- who met and married Wilkof when they did the original Little Shop -- describes Audrey II as ``. . . a shape shifter. She's male, she's female. Seductive, threatening, pathetic, sympathetic. She's a master manipulator.''

Ripe for a revival, the show ''. . . has a lot to say to us now,'' says Grappo. ``It's about what a very good person with a good heart is willing to sacrifice, and what the world will pay for that sacrifice. The stakes are very high: How far will we follow our own self-interest down the path to doom and the possible end of the human race?''

DISAPPOINTMENTS

Grappo's husband, the droll Wilkof, has had the weird experience during rehearsals of watching Foster play the role he performed a couple thousand times while trying to create his own version of Mushnik.

''Seymour is still in my head. Sometimes, I sing his part,'' says Wilkof. ``And I hear Mr. Mushnik -- there are so many versions of him in my head. It's hard to crack it open.''

Wilkof had hoped the original Little Shop would go to Broadway and give him his first huge starring role, though he concedes, ``I don't know that it would have had that longevity.''

That was not to be his only disappointment. When Little Shop got made into a movie with an alternative feel-good ending in 1986, Ellen Greene, who had starred opposite Wilkof as Audrey, got the call. But Rick Moranis played Seymour.

''I saw the movie at a private screening, and I cried for five minutes because Ellen was in it and I wasn't,'' Wilkof says. ``I didn't like it. They messed with the ending and compromised it.''

Ripley, a beauty who is forever getting cast in classic ''Rodgers and Hammerstein leading lady soprano roles,'' is thrilled about the challenge of finding her own way into a great character role.

''It's difficult to think of a way to play Audrey that's different from Ellen. She made it her own. But I want to do it as Alice. It's the same character, but I can bring different shades of the same color,'' she says. ``Audrey is so dear. She's got a huge heart. She's a walking heart with legs.''

A singer-songwriter in addition to being a Broadway star, Ripley is also relishing the chance to put her own spin on such Audrey classics as Somewhere That's Green and Suddenly, Seymour.

''This show has one of the best musical theater scores of the past 20 years,'' she says. ``It's a true rock musical. It sounds like the Ronettes, and like Stevie Winwood in its bass lines and rhythm sections.''

Foster, who left Urinetown to do Little Shop, believes that despite all the variables involved in taking a production to Broadway, there's a bedrock truth about this one.

''We don't have to reinvent the wheel here,'' he says. ``Ninety-nine percent of it works. It works in regional theater, in community theater, even if the sets aren't great or the plant is schlocky. It's fun, seamless. There's no fat to it.''

NO HIDING PLACE

Choreographer Marshall (her brother is Rob Marshall, who received an Oscar nomination for directing Chicago), says working on Little Shop is like doing ``. . . a chamber piece. Every character is a principal [character], and the movement comes from the characters and the scenes. It's a smartly constructed, lean show. Howard Ashman's lyrics are so witty and clever. You want to have the dance match that.''

Marshall, whose prowess as a director and choreographer keeps her extremely busy juggling projects in New York, is glad to have the time in Florida to work out all the details before Little Shop goes to Broadway.

But she knows, she says, that the idea of working on a show ''out of town'' isn't what it used to be.

''This allows the actors to explore the show and be a little under the radar,'' Marshall says. ``But given the national nature of entertainment reporting, there's no place you can hide. Given the Internet, you do your first preview and they're ready to spread the news.''

Fuente: The Miami Herald
Mayo 2003