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Mickey Jo
Alarm goes off at 7. Little Shop, Little Shop of Horrors. Little Shop. Do you know what actually wearing my glasses means? I can see myself in the camera for the first time ever. Should I do this more often? Should I just. Should I just wear the glasses that I need? Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you're listening on a podcast platform. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. And last week I traveled up to Sheffield in the north of the United Kingdom to go and see their piece of festive program. This is something that I tend to do with my stagey fiance, Erin James. Every year now it's become a little tradition where pre Christmas in the month of December, we will travel around the country, usually up to go and see some brilliant regional theatre, usually musicals. And we saw two shows on this trip, the second of which was the official press night of Little Shop of Horrors. Now you may be familiar with Little Shop of Horrors, it's not an unknown show, it's currently running off Broadway. There's been a successful film, film adaptation. And so when I say Little Shop of Horrors, you may be like, okay, sure. When I say to you, exciting new production, British regional theatre revival, you may be like, okay, sure. When I say to you, cast using their own British accents, then you may be saying to yourself, okay, sure. And that is exactly what this production is. This is notable because this is a bold kind of new take on Little Shop. It's not a complete departure tonally from, from the show and we're not making substantial changes to the material, but like I said, British accents and an unspecified British setting, which makes the experience of watching it quite different, especially for those of you who may know the show. Now, I've seen the show on stage before in the UK in a equally visually striking production, but one that retained the American nature of it. I've also seen the current Off Broadway revival three times now in New York, which is part of what has informed me my thinking around this one and my response to this may surprise you and you will find out what that is in today's review. Stay tuned for my full thoughts on these performances, on the direction, on the choreography, the staging, the lighting design, all of those different elements and whether or not this show works if you do it with British accents. I would also love to hear from anyone else who has already seen this production because I think regardless of how I feel about it, this feels pretty sure to be divisive. So do let us know in the comment section down below. If you've seen this production, what you thought of it as well, and if you enjoy this review, make sure you're subscribed to me right here on YouTube. Make sure to follow me on podcast platforms, on other social media apps, wherever you may find me on the musical theater Internet. My name is Micky Joe and I will be bringing you more reviews as well as over the next couple weeks, lots of roundups of my favorite and least favorite shows of 2024. But for now, let's see if this one makes either list Little Shop of Horrors at the Sheffield Crucible Did I like it? So I've spoken about this in other reviews before. Feel free to skip past this section if you already know Little Shop of Horrors or you've already heard me speak about it, but it has a score with music by Alan Menken and lyrics by the late great Howard Ashman, who also wrote the book. And the music is iconic. Suddenly Seymour is one of the great musical theatre duets of all time. Everyone knows this, but I think Somewhere that's GRE is probably also one of the great musical theatre I Want Songs of All Time. It's kind of the precursor to Part of youf World from the Little Mermaid, which I think is Disney's greatest I Want song and probably the greatest I Want song on screen, and maybe even the greatest I Want song ever written. Bold claim, but I stand by it. The reason I say that is because it was written by the same team, by Menken and Ashman. And there's something about this character of Audrey, who is this tragic heroine who doesn't believe she is worthy of this dream that she has, but is charmed by the notion of considering it anyway. It is all hypothetical. It is all contemplative. It's a life that she doesn't believe is really possible, but just the concept of it still brings joy to her regardless. And that's probably the most sincere and heartfelt moment of this show and of its score, which is very campy, very tongue in cheek, very satirical. But even in that moment there is still comedy. As you know, these lofty things that she longs for for herself are quite straightforward, but also not the height of glamour and sophistication. We as an audience are tickled by her concept of what is like the most wonderful thing she could possibly imagine. Now it's in a lot of the urchin songs in you Never Know, in the Meek she'll inherit in Little Trop of Horrors itself that you hear Alan Menken's ability to emulate different musical styles at its absolute best. This is something we would go on to hear in scores like Sister act later on in his career. He is so brilliant, and I don't know whether he's responsible for the original vocal arrangements for the Urchins, but they, I think, are also a really big part of those numbers and their brilliance as well. Then you have the way that Audrey 2 is characterized within the music with this funk soul sound. At this point, I should probably explain the plot to you. This whole thing takes place in a skid row florists that is not doing well. It is run by the long suffering and impatient Mr. Mushnick. And he has two staff members. Seymour, who he has been kind of neglecting since he hired him as a young orphan, and Audrey, who is well meaning with a heart of gold, but is a little misguided and maybe hasn't made the best choices for herself. She's in a toxic relationship with an abusive boyfriend, the results of which are increasingly shown as she's arriving to work with injured limbs and black eyes, Something that Seymour isn't necessarily acutely aware of, but he is demonstrably enamored with her. Now. We soon find out that Seymour, who has this hobby of investigating strange and unusual plants, has recently acquired a new one called Audrey 2. He has named it Audrey 2 after Audrey 1. And his passing theory that if perhaps they put it in the window, it might attract more visitors to the store turns out to be comically correct. And the plant soon sees him and the shop becoming more successful than anticipated. The only problem is Seymour simultaneously discovers that the plant can only be fed and nurtured using human blood. Initially, this is his, but the plant, which begins to talk to him and beg him to feed it, begins to suggest other ways in which he could acquire human blood in larger quantities. And so it becomes a moral fable here as well as the plant is imploring Seymour to do malicious, nefarious, murderous deeds in order to feed it, and promising Seymour wealth and success and the affection of Audrey, those things he wants most in the world in return for that. And not that it's a particularly deep show, but we could certainly read into this the idea of wealth and the attraction of power and opportunity being forces which corrupt these incredibly pure souls of Seymour and Audrey. Here's the thing. I think that Off Broadway production I mentioned is so quintessential, is so perfect. I don't think you can do Classic Little Shop better than that. Certainly not in a large space. I think this is a show that inherently plays well to a smaller, more intimate auditorium. And the sensibility of the current New York production so perfectly understands it tonally, like, it's just perfect. I don't think I would enjoy, certainly a British production where everyone is trying to do that, not quite as well. I'm kind of predisposed, because of that to be more welcoming of a big swing, of something completely different. I would rather see bold creative vision, to take it in a new direction, to, you know, have a stance on it, have an interpretation of Little Shop. What else can this piece be? What else can it say? What does it say to you as a creative? What else can this British cast find in it with a different kind of approach to authenticity, where they're bringing a bit more of themselves and their own cultural perspective? All of those sorts of questions, certainly for those shows that we see again and again and again. This is not the only Little Shop that has been professionally produced in the UK this year. I would rather see a big swing every single time. And this is certainly a big swing from director Amy Hodge. This production that has been created for the Sheffield Crucible's main space, which, if you don't know, is sort of like thrust space, with audience members seated around three sides of the this stage, the whole thing feels bigger, it feels bolder, it feels brighter than other Little Shop of Horrors productions you may have seen in the past. We have a slightly larger ensemble. There's very inventive use of different set pieces. We have people bursting out of big rubbish container bins. We have this gorgeous neon recreation of the show's title, Little Shop of Horrors, at the back of the stage. But only certain words of the title are lit or flash up at certain moments, and the moment that the word horror is used, flashing up in red to represent when something sinister is happening on stage. We have Little Shop lit up for much of the beginning of the exposition, when it's just Mushnik's Flower Shop before they're doing particularly well. And we have some of the letters of that not working as well, just to really drive that message home. There is, in fact, such a striking visual attention to detail in this show. I would go as far as to say this is one of the most exciting. Like directors eyes for detail and aesthetics and visual staging I've seen in a long time. This production, more so than anything else, made me really excited about Amy Hodge and the work that was done here on direction, because we've seen dozens of little shops. I've personally seen a whole bunch of little shops and to find ways to make it feel so fresh and so dynamic is brilliant and resourceful and innovative and some of my favorite qualities in a theater production. Now let's talk about the way that they actually create Audrey 2. So before we even see, like, the real Audrey 2, the plant is invoked using clever hand puppetry through little pots and little green, like, sock puppets that I assume are sewn into the inside. So performers are poking their hands through and holding these little pots and creating these little green sock puppet plants. Very clever. The first Audrey II puppet that we see is functionally not dissimilar to that. But as Audrey 2 begins to grow, there is a moment, and we have seen this done before, where the performer voicing the plant becomes visible. This is something that happened when Audrey 2 was portrayed by a drag queen named Vicky Vox for the Regents Park Open Air Theater revival about five or six years ago. And it was around the line. Does this look inanimate to you, punk? When Vicky, dressed as a drag interpretation of Audrey 2, stepped out of this container. Too much applause. And was then visible performing, portraying, singing the role for the remainder of the show. Sam Buttery does the same thing as Audrey 2 in this one. Preempts the line a little bit, I feel like is revealed a little bit earlier. That's kind of the moment in the script that it makes the most sense to do it, and it would be a little more impactful. In fact, there are a handful of moments where I thought that specific note could be applied where things happened but didn't necessarily happen at the most impactful moment. Per the script. As the plant continues to grow, particularly in the second act, we then see Audrey 2 represented via Sambatay and an entourage. Entourage. This being initially two other performers alongside them who are puppeteering these sort of tendrils. This group subsequently grows in number as Audrey 2 grows in size pursuant to the people that Audrey 2 is eating. Spoiler alert. It's a plant who eats people using the tendrils. The tendrils become enticement and also murder weapons. And we see the tendrils extending across the stage. And this becomes incorporated into the set design. As we go into the second act, the space has evolved somewhat. The lighting is all green. I described it as tendrils, tendrils, tendrils across the board. And it's not the most creative use of puppetry I've seen in a production of Little Shop of Horrors. That again, goes to the current Off Broadway one. And there's just less puppetry in this one. That's just not how they are choosing to deliver this character and tell this story. What we get instead is the opportunity because we're using performers to portray this murderous plant is the threat is much more real. Like off Broadway. You are kind of acutely aware that the characters who get eaten by the plant are going to have to approach the plant because it's just less mobile in this production. It's. It feels like no one's safe from Audrey II. The threat is real because Audrey 2 and her tendrils can move around the space a lot more freely. And the actual scenes of death are so much more intense and horrifying and bloodthirsty in a gruesome and brilliant ways. We have these red lighting flashes and the word horrors is flashing up in neon at the back of the stage and audrey2 is screaming out in blood curdling delight. It's all like really intense. It's a more horror inclusive version of Little Shop of Horrors for sure. And I think it's a balance because they definitely play that up more. And there are still plenty of moments of comedy throughout the show. But there are also a handful of others. A lot of Audrey's arc honestly feels less played for comedy in this one. A lot of her lines about her toxic relationship with her abusive boyfriend that we come to find out more about over the course of the first act have historically been played with a sort of a comic tragic irony in this. They are just played for sort of difficult emotional weight. So I guess what we need to talk about next is the nature of relocating this to some unspecified British location. And they still make reference to Skid Row. We are still based on Skid Row, but there is no concept of where that might be. There are a handful of small little cultural references that they have changed. Like the urchins, when they had a line where they used to talk about which grade they stayed in school until. And then they split. They now say that they stayed in school until year six and then they split. Which is obviously a British reference to the schooling system here. But usually where those references come in a lyric within a song, those go unchanged. So Audrey's song Somewhere that's Green is full of Americana domestic references. And, you know, some of those could still make sense from a British perspective, like Betty Crocker and Donna Reed, but others feel more ostensibly American. I think the reference to Levittown because it comes in the dialogue before the song. I think that was cut, but I don't remember. The other thing is Mr. Mushnick as a character Feels a little more separated from his cultural Jewish identity in this iteration of the show. Musically, the moment where we would get that the most would have been Mushnick and Son. The song where he is trying to convince Seymour to let him legally adopt him because Seymour's star is on the rise and Mr. Mushnick sees him as a cash cow in terms of the staging of it, they kind of go in more of a matadorial direction where, like, Seymour's pretending to be a bull and we've got a red cape and they're doing a faux romantic tango. The talented Chris Poon is the musical director for this production, and I really enjoyed all of the music. Do Mean Green Mother From Outer Space after the curtain call as a little finale, which is very, very fun. The one thing that gave me pause happened super early and was felt like a pretty bold musical departure from the original arrangements and orchestrations. And then there wasn't as much change that I noticed as we progressed through the rest of the show. But this was in the first number in the title song, Little Shop of Horrors, as we go into. What a creepy thing to be happening. Look out, look out, look out, look out. And much of the urchins music that they sing feels inspired by girl groups, specifically by, like, 60s girl groups. But we did something with. Not with the tempo here, but just with the orchestrations where we did this, like, double time hoedown. Kind of a vibe coming into, like, sing a link. What a creepy thing to be happening. Look out, look out, look out, look out. And then we just reverted back for the rest of the song. It was an odd moment where I thought I might have been hallucinating, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't. I'll talk more about the different accents when I tell you about the performance momentarily. But it was interesting. It was interesting to see the show in a different way. And this is a trend we're seeing more and more of in musical theater lately. After shows like six, like Hadestown, with performers using their own natural accents in these roles, why Am I so Single? Does the same thing. There are a handful of others. We are seeing this more and more. I think it does lend just a little more authenticity to the character. And it's more conducive to honesty and vulnerability. And to do like a kind of an Audrey style voice in the style of the iconic Ellen Green, who originated the role. There's a certain level of artifice that comes with that where you can still give her a tremendous amount of humanity and vulnerability as of course, Ellen Green so beautifully did. But I think for a British performer doing an American accent in that style, it gets a little bit harder. You move a little further away from her being a real person. And for a production that is vibrant but not really campy, it makes more sense, honestly, for them to use a more natural voice and listen. There are campy touches that I missed throughout the show. When they're doing callback in the morning and they don't have chords on the telephones because they're using a more modern handset receiver. Like, it's not quite as cutesy, it's not quite as silly and whimsical, but it's a different interpretation, and that is what I celebrate. Jessica Hunghanyun's lighting design, I think, was my favorite thing. Not only that neon on the back, but so many really striking effects. We begin with today's date on a screen on the front of a little circular, like, lighting rig that lifts up to reveal this draped circular cloth enclosure beneath it. And then we have the first number, Little Shop of Horrors, performed with the three urchins around the outside of it and more performers on the inside, giving you shadow, lighting effect, silhouette, choreography. Like they're playing just dance. That was great. I did have a little bit of creative whiplash at the beginning because I was like, is this what the show is going to be? When the urchins came out and they're wearing all white, they subsequently transform into different characters, as we've seen before. Like they become the nurses in the dentistry office, but when they were in all white at the beginning, like, it's the 90s and they're a female Backstreet Boys impersonation trio. I. I didn't quite know why. And the choreography, feeling quite like urban contemporary to go with that as well. All added to just, like, this slightly puzzling first impression. But that wasn't kind of the way with which we continued the show. Their costumes gave me pause, I will say. I also have to talk about two different moments involving wolf scolding and how they were staged, because we first meet him as Oren Scravello, dds, Audrey's psychotic dentist boyfriend, who we've seen before riding on a motorcycle in this production. He comes in on an electric scooter that he then parks. It's so silly. It so perfectly establishes him as taking himself wildly seriously but being completely ridiculous. That's a brilliant touch. We see him puppeteering a giant set of teeth at one point. Again, silly, charming. And then towards the end, he comes back Portraying a bunch of different characters who are each eager to get Seymour to sign into some sort of agreement, some sort of a contract, offering him some exciting and lucrative opportunity. He plays like a TV executive and the wife of the editor of Life magazine and then a talent agent from William Morris. But the last one in this production, he comes on dressed as the devil. And Seymour, kind of like his hand burns to the touch when he shakes it. And he has an entourage with him holding these scrolls to get Seymour to sign. That's the contract. And there's this giant scroll they unravel that they wrap around Seymour and they're, like, literally twisting him in knots. And they pull it down over his head and he appears through a hole in the middle. All of it genius, brilliant. And the level of direction where you are saying to yourself, what can we do here? Not what do we need to do here? What gets us from this scene into the next one? What is, like, the functional choices that we need to make? It's saying, what are the opportunities to do something compelling, to do something exciting, to do something funny, to do something scary? What can we do here? What are the choices that we can make? And it's just a level of fun and creativity in this direction, which, for a show that has been done so many different ways, I think is just brilliant. I am so, so enamored with this direction. So Colin Ryan plays Seymour in a deeply endearing performance and uses a West Midlands accent of some description. I don't want to go out on a limb and be any more geographically specific than that. One review referred to it as a black country accent. This characterizes Seymour in a very sweet, very charming, and perhaps slightly naive sense. I found it very interesting how this was perceived by the audience because just some of the delivery of his early lines got laughs, ostensibly just because of the accent with which they were spoken. A certain amount of that is hearing lines and hearing dialogue that you're used to hearing in an American accent. Suddenly spoken in a British regional accent is always going to be funny just because of the disconnect. Like if you take iconic movie lines and suddenly did them in a completely different accent, like, there's a comedy to that as well, just because it's unusual. But I don't necessarily think the entirety of that audience were completely familiar with Little Shop to the extent that that's where the laugh was coming from. And there is a wider conversation to be had here beyond this production. If we look at Little Shop of Horrors, the original production, if we look at the accent that Audrey normally has. This characterizes her in a certain way. And it doesn't suggest immediately to the audience that she is particularly wise or worldly. It's kind of the other end of that. Anyway, on the actual performance, like I said, incredibly sweet, charismatic, perhaps even the littlest bit too charismatic. This was a Seymour who smiled a lot. And there is always charm to be had in, you know, Seymour's ability to smile in spite of his circumstances. He has a lot of lines like that where he's like, ah, if I had a mother, she'd be so happy when he's becoming successful. But I just think I wanted to see the sorrow more towards the beginning, outside of the song Skid Row. Like, that's where it comes in, obviously, because he's singing these lines about like, how do I get out of here? I've always been poor, my life is sad. But just in the dialogue as well. I think it needed that sense of inferiority and smallness that Seymour feels at the beginning. What was played really, really well is the resentment towards the plant and kind of the mania that he is driven towards in the second act, as he's constantly being hounded for blood and for feeding. And I think the ability to have two performers on stage playing that to each other, to have someone physically there as the plant, allows you to get more into the complexity of that relationship between actors. Again, it's not Shakespeare, but we felt the tension there very acutely. And as Seymour eventually rose up in defiance of the plant's demands, that was great. That felt very brilliantly David and Goliath esque. Now, alongside Colin, we had Georgina Onwara. There she is as Audrey, a wonderful musical theater role. And Georgina is this hugely exciting rising star. We've seen her on stage recently in the wizard of Oz as Dorothy. She was one of the performers to play Ado Annie in the Daniel Fish revival of Oklahoma. In the West End. She was recently Lois Lane in Kiss Me Kate at the Barbican. She has this sensational voice. She's a brilliant actress. And hers was probably the performance I was most excited to see as we headed up to Sheffield. And it's a very different Audrey because, like I said, I think per the direction, a lot of the usual comedy and the irony of this character has kind of been peeled back to reveal just like the extents of despair at the beginning. A lot of those lines she has about Orin and the dialogue she has with the urchins, where they're trying to implore her to better her own condition and to leave him. And when she's expressing the fear that she has about what would happen if she tried to leave him, it's. It's like I said, played with a lot more weight here and a lot more sincerity. And that has a real troubling impact. Of course, unsurprisingly, she also gives us beautiful renditions of Somewhere that's Green and her half of Suddenly Seymour. Very heartfelt, very touching. She has this kind of a Judy Garland esque quality to her voice that does feel very classic and lends itself well to a bunch of different scores, as we've heard. And I think one of the most important things for Seymour and Audrey to find is this sweetness to their relationship. And it's beautiful inevitability as they both think that the other could never possibly love them. And so the moment when they do finally come together and sing this extraordinary song, it has to be triumphant. And it was. And it was just the two of them. No needlessly additional staging, just singing this wonderful song. It was great. Lizzy, Rose Essen, Kelly, Paige Fenlon and Charlotte Jacanelli played the Urchins. They did a fantastic job. I do wonder if, you know, they'd had these characters presenting a little younger on stage, whether that would have connected it more to, you know, what they usually convey. I felt like the Urchins were there to sing and dance us into the next scene, but in terms of their own identities and their own characterizations, it got a little bit lost in this production. They felt like more of a Greek chorus that didn't have their own distinct personalities. Someone who had plenty of personality was Sam buttery as Audrey 2. Providing the spoken and singing voice of Audrey 2 and then inhabiting and portraying the character on stage. Wonderful high energy, giving like, kind of like a. Like a slightly Northern drag queen quality just to the vocal characterization of some of the spoken lines and some of the sassy exchanges with Seymour, villainous and insidious and slightly coy and flirtatious in some of the later scenes. And like the enticement of Audrey, a wonderfully cartoonish villain on stage. And I'm so glad that that encore moment happens at the end of the curtain call as well. I think that's a lovely final note for this production. Finally, there's also brilliant support from Michael Matis as Mr. Mushnick. He is perpetually exhausted and short tempered, but in particular the moment when he is confronting Seymour about the discoveries that he has made with the little red dots all over the floor. That scene is so well played in the frantic energy that he has as he is crawling around the stage and beseeching him to go with him to the police station. And then the results of that scene, brilliant, really well done. Really delivers that horror quality to it. And Wilf scolding scene stealing as Orin and a handful of other characters later in the show as well. Back to the accent conversation. His is interesting because he has a received pronunciation delivery here, which just means like a British accent, not unlike my own. But there's this slightly, like, public school, like, classic Rick Mayall quality to it as well. And so there's a comedy that comes from that. And he's very obnoxious and he talks down to everyone and he tells Seymour what he ought to do given his newfound success. And so it plays into all of that as well, but it sort of brings in an element of class with it as well. This is another conversation that Aaron and I had subsequently. And he does just feel like this very juvenile school bully that never really grew up and continues to behave that way throughout the world. And he's a little bit ludicrous, but there's also a real menace and a danger to him as well. And Wolf Scolding does a fantastic job as all of the characters that he plays in this show. He is wonderfully heightened. He's like a human version of a Muppet on that stage. It's excellent. Those have been my thoughts about the performances. Those have been my thoughts about the show, about this production of Little Shop of Horrors. I don't think every single choice works perfectly. I don't think it's a quintessential version of the show. I don't think we ought to be saying all future British productions should have British accents, but I think they've found something strikingly interesting with it. I think they've managed to allow me to feel like I'm seeing and hearing Little Shop in a completely new way, which I thought was very exciting. And just the creativity of it, I really do celebrate. So if you're a fan of Little Shop of Horrors, if you are open to a new interpretation of the show, head on over to the Sheffield Crucible and go and check out what they're doing with it. I promise you, you will be entertained. In the meantime. Thank you so much for listening to this review. I hope that you've enjoyed. If you did, make sure to subscribe. Follow me. You know what to do. Many more reviews, many more videos coming very soon all across social media. And don't forget to comment with your thoughts down below. If you have already seen this production of Little Shop of Horrors. In the meantime, it is nearly time for a bit of a festive break. But between now and then, I do have more reviews coming as well as roundups coming at the end of the year. Make sure you don't miss those. But I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.