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People love gathering around plants to celebrate holidays. Decorated evergreen trees and mistletoe sprigs mark Christmas just like the marijuana smoked on the annual Thanksgiving walk around the block with chill relatives. In that spirit, more than five dozen people attended the opening night of Triangle Productions’ staging of Little Shop of Horrors on Friday, Nov. 29. Bloated from the previous night’s feast is just how Audrey II would want his audience. In a year when the stage and screen’s biggest baddie is a green villain, Triangle Productions founder Don Horn sees the monstrously charming maneater as a lemon yellow puppet.
Also not unlike Wicked—the movie based on the musical based on a book based on the classic movie based on another book—Little Shop of Horrors is a musical based on a movie-musical remake of a short story-based movie. The entertainment industry’s appetite for rehashed intellectual property is as ravenous as Audrey II’s hunger for flesh, with each budding head of a movie/book/musical/album spread forth to choke the planet. Like Reefer Madness and its 2005 movie-musical, the 1986 Little Shop of Horrors and its subsequent stage adaptation have fun with a B horror movie with effects and elements too cheesy to otherwise be taken seriously.
The latest local iteration doesn’t make any of the headline-grabbing choices of this year’s other national productions—like Jinkx Monsoon and former Disney star Corbin Bleu’s off-Broadway run as Audrey and Seymour, or fellow RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Latrice Royale’s turn as Audrey II in Maine—but Triangle’s Little Shop of Horrors sells the beloved songs and campy moments fans expect nevertheless.
Seymour (Ryan Edlinger) and Audrey (Abbe Drake) work in a failing Skid Row flower shop owned by Mr. Mushnik (Michael Rouches). A strange plant Seymour names for his crush immediately attracts customers, flourishing after tasting blood. He quickly learns that Audrey II (Kimo Camat) demands human meat to spread his vines and Seymour’s own botanical fame. Sacrificing his boss-dad, as well as Audrey’s abusive dentist boyfriend Orin (Rich Cohn-Lee), Seymour justifies it all to start the life his sweetheart dreams of, but loses it all in a surprisingly poignant greed parable.
Camat’s booming tenor brings Audrey II to life, his rich timbre persuading Edlinger to carry out Seymour with a similar lovable nerd air that Rick Moranis personified onscreen. Drake’s Betty Boop-style New York damsel accent is the typical every-girl voice Ellen Greene originated. Drake carries it beautifully during her solo number “Somewhere That’s Green.” Cohn-Lee’s fatal venturi mask was admittedly a cool costume piece, recalling an old-school diving helmet. Lydia Fleming stood out as the consistently strongest vocalist and dancer in the show’s Greek chorus trio of neighborhood schoolgirls, with her fully committed stage presence continually drawing in the eye.
The show’s two acts feel evenly split, though the first act’s reveal of Audrey II’s bloodthirsty nature came a bit rushed. Then again, Little Shop of Horrors is so well known by now that there’s not a whole lot of point building up suspense when audiences are familiar enough that they’re waiting to get to “the good parts,” like Audrey II’s bellowing demands to be fed. While no one is suggesting making shows longer by adding new content, it would be interesting to one day see a show that incorporates some of the 1960 original’s more thoughtful storytelling elements. Mr. Mushnik originally served as a warning against allowing oneself to be a cog to an evil machine, a reminder we could all use if productions still keep the hammy, heavy-handed numbers like “Don’t Feed the Plants.”
Little Shop of Horrors is a comfy musical theater standard. During the year-end season, when The Nutcracker and A Christmas Carol are the usual Yuletide go-to plays, Little Shop of Horrors stays open for fans and makes the case that it too can bring out the good cheer of the season. This is not to say that Triangle Productions adds poinsettias to the props department. Rather, the holidays are what you make it. Like family, the holidays happen when people come together anywhere, but especially somewhere that’s green.
SEE IT: Little Shop of Horrors at Triangle Productions, 1785 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-239-5919, trianglepro.org. 7:30 pm Thursday–Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, Dec. 5–21. $20–$40.