books & lyrics by
based on the film by Roger Corman music by
screenplay by Charles Griffith

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VENUE:
SCHOOLS’
PERFORMANCES:
RUNNING TIME:
SUITABILITY:
ADVISORY:
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Tim Carlsen — Seymour Krelborn | Colleen Davis — Audrey
Andrew Grainger — Orin Scrivello / Ensemble | Paul Barrett — Mr Mushnik
Bronwyn Turei — Ronnette | Rosita Vai — Chiffon
Bella Kalolo — Crystal | Rima Te Wiata — Audrey II (voice) / Ensemble
Kyle Chuen — Audrey II (puppeteer) / Ensemble
Simon Coleman — Direction | Jason Te Mete — Musical Direction
Howard Ashman — Book and lyrics | Alan Menken — Music
Tracey Collins — Set Design | Elizabeth Whiting — Costume Design
Brad Gledhill — Lighting Design | Rachel Marlow — Lighting Design (Assistant)
Sandra Rasmussen — Choreography
Paul Towson — Production Manager | Paul Nicoll — Technical Manager
Fern Christie — Senior Stage Manager
Stacey Donaldson — Assistant Stage Manager | Gabrielle Rhodes — Stage Hand
Rochelle Houghton — Lighting Operator | Rory Maguire — Sound Engineer
Sophie Ham — Wardrobe Technician | Diana Kovacs — Props Master
2Construct — Set Construction
Jason Te Mete — Keyboard | Robert Drage — Bass
Tyson Smith — Guitarist | Andrew Rooney — Drums
James Wenley — Researcher and Writer | Lynne Cardy — Editor
Tracy Collins and Elizabeth Whiting — Design drawings
Michael Smith — Production Images | Claire Flynn — Design & Rehearsal Photos
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LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS combines several different genres in telling the story: it’s a comedy, horror, science-fiction, musical satire and all inspired by an early
60’s B Movie that was also a spoof.
“On the twenty-first day of the month of
September, in an early year of a decade not too long before our own, the human race suddenly encountered a deadly threat to its very existence. And this terrifying enemy surfaced – as such enemies often do – in the seemingly most innocent and unlikely of places.”
This enemy – a giant, carnivorous, talking alien plant – first surfaced in the black and white 1960 B Movie The Little Shop of Horrors, a horror comedy directed by
Roger Corman. It was legendary for being shot in only two days and one night, reusing set from his previous film A Bucket of Blood.
It contained an early film appearance by
Jack Nicholson. Seymour’s new unusual plant ‘Audrey Jnr’ convinces him to start killing people to feed him, which leads to his own downfall though Mushnik and Audrey survive. Film characters not in the stage musical include Seymour’s hypochondriac mother, two investigating policeman, and a masochistic dental patient.
The film doesn’t instantly lend itself to a musical imagining, for that it took the talents of composer Alan Menken and writer/lyricist Howard Ashman.
Ashman first saw Little Shop on TV as a child in his hometown of Baltimore, USA.
“It was way past my bedtime on a school night and the beat-up black and white
TV was working overtime in my teenaged den of iniquity, the pine-paneled clubroom of our split-level home in Baltimore. The plant monster, Audrey Junior, made a deep and lasting impression. ‘Feed me,
Krelborn, Feed me now!’ The words were never to leave my adolescent consciousness. Here, at last, was a monster I could quote! I mean, can you remember any of Godzilla’s snappy oneliners?” – Ashman
The film would have a formative experience on Ashman, who had never seen a satire before. “It was fun to see something that didn’t take its genre seriously”. Ashman wrote a number of musicals between the ages of 12-16, including musical versions of To Kill a Mockingbird and the life of Charlie
Chaplin. One of them was The Candy
Shop, about a man who falls in love with an “evil talking plant”.
Seymour Krelbourn is poor young man, an orphan living on
Skid Row who works tirelessly for Mr Mushnik in his failing flower shop. In love with his co-worker Audrey, he dreams of another life far away from the urban decay but knows it will never happen. Until, that is, he finds a strange looking plant during a total eclipse of the sun, which changes his life and those he loves forever.
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The ‘B Movie’ is a low budget commercially released film that was originally distributed as the second film in a
‘Double Feature’. From the 1950s, the term encompassed cheaply produced Horror and science fiction films, of which The Little Shop of Horrors was one of them, though it spoofed the genre.
Director Roger Corman was the king of B Movies.
Other titles he has directed or produced include:
- Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)
- The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage
to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1957)
- She Gods of Shark Reef (1958)
- Creature from the Haunted Sea (1951)
- Dinocroc vs Supergator (2010)
Alan Menken doesn’t recall the first time
Ashman broached him about making a musical out of the film. He remembers his reaction – “fear” and “concern”. But he was quickly inspired by his vision. The writer and composer team set to work on acquiring the rights and bringing the idea to life.
“A musical about a man-eating plant?” said Ashman’s agent, “Producers are going to laugh me right out of their offices.” Luckily, they wouldn’t need a producer, not yet anyway. Ashman had a tiny 98 seat theatre Broadway called the WPA (some said the initials stood for ‘We’ll Produce Anything’). In
New York, there are different categories of theatres – Broadway is where the mainbill commercial productions appear,
Off-Broadway is for less expensive shows. WPA was Off-Off Broadway, for alternative Fringe productions.
The show was rehearsed in 4 weeks,
“on love and creativity and no money,” according to actress Ellen Greene who played Audrey. It opened in 1982 to critical acclaim and full houses; it was moved to the Orpheum Theatre Off-
Broadway and became the highest grossing Off-Broadway show of all time.
Despite its success, it never transferred to
Broadway during its original run; Ashman felt the show would lose its effect in a big
Broadway theatre. According to Menken,
“What burst at the seams in a tiny, funky theatre like the Orpheum would get lost in a larger theatre at a higher ticket price; our tiny band and tacky look might just seem a little tacky, not smart and fun”.
The show finally reached Broadway proper in 2003, with an $8 million revival that expanded the orchestrations and featured a plant that extended over the audience.
Little Shop was adapted into a musical film directed by Frank Oz and released in 1986. It starred Rick Moranis, Ellen
Greene (who had originated the role of
Audrey Off-Off Broadway), Steve Martin and Bill Murray. It featured a new song from Menken and Ashman – ‘Mean
Green Mother from Outerspace’ – and was largely faithful to the stage version.
The film’s original ending had Audrey II destroying the city after eating Seymour and Audrey. During test screenings the audiences loved the film’s humour, but the reaction to the ending was overwhelmingly negative. Reluctantly, the filmmakers reshot a happy ending where
Audrey and Seymour didn’t die, though an Audrey II plant is shown growing in the garden of their new white picket fenced house.
An unusual adaption of the story followed in 1991: Little Shop, an animated cartoon inspired by the film that cast Seymour and Audrey as kids and Audrey II (Junior) as a friendly, rapping plant.
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Musicals have their origins in European comic operetta, which featured spoken dialogue and operatic singing. They became a form of their own on the
Broadway stage, popular entertainment appealing to wide audiences. Musicals often present a romantic view of life – presenting audiences not with the world as it is, but how it should be. Thoughts, feelings, and ideas are presented not just in spoken word, but in song and dance.
“Intellectual attitudes give way to emotion, passion prevails over decorum, and above all, romantic love radiates from the center of all things” – Richard Kislan.
LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS is a
‘nostalgic’ musical in that its score uses pastiches of 1950s and 60s styles including Rock N Roll, Do Wop, R&B and Gospel. Other ‘nostalgic’ musicals include GREASE and DREAMGIRLS.
It is also a musical satire, spoofing the
Horror and Science-fiction Genres. The
Rocky Horror Show (1973) is another example of this kind.
The narrative of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS can be related to a Faustian morality tale. Faust was a German Doctor who sold his soul to Mephistopheles, the Devil, in exchange for youth, power and riches. He was punished with eternal damnation.
Audrey II, like Mephistopheles, promises to deliver anything that Seymour’s heart desires.
“Would you like a cadilac car? Or a Guest shot on Jack
Paar? How about a date with Hedy Lamar? You gonna git it!”
In return, the plant convinces Seymour to carry out immoral acts – watching Orin laugh to death from his gas, or encouraging Mr Mushnik to enter the plant. Seymour becomes famous and gets the girl, but his pact leads to their own deaths. LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS can be read as a morality tale warning against the false lure of fame and riches in exchange for compromising your own values.
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LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS was
Alan Menken (Composer) and Howard
Ashman’s (Lyricist) first big hit. They teamed up again to work on Disney’s
The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the
Beast. Unfortunately, Ashman died of
AIDs before the film was released and while they were working on Aladdin.
Menken completed the songs with lyricist Tim Rice. A Whole New World won best song at the Oscars. Menken continued to write scores for Disney including Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Enchanted and Tangled.
Menken has won eight Oscars, more than any other living individual. He says that bigger than any Academy Award was opening Little Shop at the WPA for the first time and realising they had a hit. “For the first time in my life I thought maybe I won’t have to do jingles anymore.”
“From the time that Howard and I started working on Little Shop I felt it was the most compelling idea for a show because of the outrageousness of the story, because of the fun of the
Roger Corman B Movie aspect, and because of the heart of the story – this nerdy guy in the florist shop and this trampy girl, and this man eating plant” –
Alan Menken.
ASHMAN MENKEN
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He bursts out of his seat and begins to dance and prance around the stage, showing actor Paul
Barrett where he wants his character
(Mushnik) to go. Coleman is full of these moments – he can barely sit still, full to bursting with enthusiasm about LITTLE
SHOP OF HORRORS. It looks like great fun to direct.
How seriously, I ask him, do you have to take a musical about a big, talking, people-eating plant?
“Not very”, says Simon, “It is a lot of fun, its outrageous fun. We want the characters and all to be believable, but there is of course a heightened reality to the whole production.”
When first discussing his vision and ideas for the ATC production of Little
Shop, Simon acknowledged that they felt “dangerous”.
The show, ‘a lovely boutique piece of theatre’ has been done many times by schools and community groups and is known and loved by many people.
“That was foremost in our mind when we were re-imagining the show – we didn’t want to follow the original design, we wanted to re-imagine the plant and the production”.
How a director interprets a play is often met with interest. Will they set it in a different time period to when it was written? Will they change the gender of the characters? In the Musical
Theatre genre however, there can be a resistance to different interpretations.
Touring productions (such as Mary
Poppins and Jersey Boys at The Civic) are carbon copies of their Broadway debuts.
One of the reasons, Simon believes, is that “Musicals have a formula; good musicals have a tried and true way of doing things. We haven’t played with the structure of the piece at all, it’s a very well crafted piece of script and score, it’s excellent – all the songs are extensions of the dialogue. It’s just fantastically crafted.”
Simon says he does like to play around with musicals, avoiding copying other people’s works. Little Shop’s design over the years has remained largely faithful to the original production, including the Venus Fly Trap inspired plant. Simon however has made some key creative decisions that depart from the conventional. “It felt very dangerous, but that’s what theatre is about, taking those risks.”
The iconic plant has an entirely new design, and has become an inflatable.
While Little Shop was inspired by
1960s film and music, it was written in the '80s with elements of '80s style, which designer Elizabeth Whiting has integrated into the costume design.
He’s got a different take too on the girls
– Crystal, Ronette and Chiffon – who act as a quasi Greek Chorus in the show, commenting on the action. In this version, they are from another world.
“They are from the Mothership, and are here in Skid Row as guardians for the plant to ensure it’s success. And that works really well in the script, so they have two alter-egos really. There are the ‘aliens’ – fabulous green divas from outerspace. And then they are in disguise on Planet Earth as street urchins, unemployed people hanging out in the poorest part of town. So they switch backwards and forwards. Its sort of in the original play as well, the girls would switch from grungy unemployed people to fabulous divas, but we’ve made more of that with their alter-egos.
Its working really nicely I think.”
Musicals come with many unique challenges with many more elements like choreography and music that have to all blend and happen together at the same time.
The biggest challenge was casting, which took 12 months to complete. “It all stemmed off Andrew Grainger [who plays Orin and a variety of smaller roles], he’s such an outrageous performer, we had to find people who would fit in around him, match his energy.” Actors needed to be able to sing, and move as well.
Jason Te Mete had the idea of casting
Rima Te Wiata as the voice of the plant
Audrey II, which is traditionally played by a male, Soul inspired, baritone. Simon’s initial reaction was to ask if that was too radical a change, a ‘step too far’.
“But then once I thought about it – she’s such a clever mimic as well as being a fabulous actor. She’s very clever with her voice, so we had a workshop with her and knew this would work... It was
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Simon has made a living out of directing high school and community theatre, and admits to being apprehensive about being entrusted with Auckland Theatre
Company’s flagship end of year musical.
The experience however, so far, has been “easy”.
“You’ve got such talented people wanting to get on the same page as you, so it’s been great. I think a director of a musical gets it pretty good because you are sharing the workload with a choreographer and musical director, so it’s a pleasure, you’ve got three minds working towards the same goal.”
During early rehearsals the team would split up to work on the different areas of the show – Simon working on scenes, musical director Jason Te Mete working on songs, and choreographer Sandra
Rassmussen on the movement. Often they’d have things going on in three different rooms all at once before bringing them together.
Simon likes to ‘sketch’ out the piece really fast, blocking the whole show in under two weeks of rehearsals.
“I like to sketch it out real quick so we can get the shape and the journey with the actors. With musicals its like
‘my character has to do a jig in the second half’, my character has to move this piece of scenery for this scene transition, I like the actors to get an overview of everything involved in the journey that their character has to make, and then they can go back and make informed choices about how it all fits together continuity wise.”
Simon works closely during rehearsals with musical director Jason Te Mete, and describes the relationship between director and musical director as
“equals”.
“It’s all about trying stuff out and accepting offers and giving offers and giving it a go. If something doesn’t work, you find something else. In the case of this musical both Jason and
I are enamoured with it because it is so good and so clever. The music is really important because with a good musical the music dictates, the music suggests.”
During rehearsals, Simon focuses closely on the blocking and ‘stage picture’ – how the actors move around onstage and relate to the audiences.
With the actors he tries out many different movements to find the right one. Little Shop uses a thrust stage with the audience on three sides, so he has to pay special attention to how different sides of the audience will see the onstage action.
“Much of the blocking is about who you want the audience to focus on, so you’ve got to move them around a lot so audiences aren’t just getting the back of the head of somebody.
So much of that for me is about the mechanics of it, and how it works as a whole.”
“The actors are so clever, they are looking after their own performance. My job has been how to keep it interesting, and seamless. The music does that, the music leads us to the next thing, and
I like to see it all choreographed and happen in front of us. And once you’ve got that structure, that’s where you can detail it.“
Simon sees the central message of
LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS is about
“believing in ourselves, and that love can be found in the most unlikely places. So it’s got a huge heart and it is very much a classic Faust story in making a bargain with the devil to win the girl.”
He also wants audiences to have a good time. An outrageously good time.
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Simon and the creative team decided early on that they wanted the visual feel, of
LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS to be ‘Comic Book Superhero’. Simon was inspired by the aesthetic of retro Batman comics and this idea would influence the various design elements of the show.
LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS is set in
Skid Row, New York so turning it into a comic book Gotham city was a clear choice. Set Designer Tracey Collins has created a set that uses the full height of
Q theatre and really fills the space.
Little Shop needs few stage changes, with most of the action taking place at
Mr Mushnik’s Flower Shop and on the street outside.
Tracey has pared the set right back, going for a non-naturalistic and open setting. Three simple boxes on wheels are able to be moved around onstage by the actors in different configurations to establish different locations.
The stage instead is dominated by large comic book inspired patterns and shapes.
A door at the back of the Q stage is used to reveal the plant at different stages of its growth.
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Once costume designer Elizabeth
Whiting saw Tracey Collin’s monochromatic paintwork for the set, she knew she had to take the costumes into a world of bright colour in order to stand out, and to accentuate the comic book feel. It was useful during the design process for Elizabeth to test each costume design against a background like the palette and pattern of the scenic painting (see sketches below).
In designing the style of the costumes,
Elizabeth was aware of the 60s style of the music, but did not want to be bound into it either. She has been influenced by the flamboyance of the 80s but was careful not to make it a period piece.
“Rather than revealing through costume, this design task was more one of serving the characters (which are clearly drawn in the script) and making sure the costumes evolved as the actors added their quirks to the characters.” –
Elizabeth Whiting
For Ronnette, Chrystal and Chiffon, she has been creating outfits for their two alter-egos – the glamorous alien divas and the street urchins. However, the girls alter egos are not entirely distinct.
There will be points at which they realize they have not made a full transition and have to change lipstick on stage. This process is an evolving one in rehearsal.
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Brad Gledhill’s lighting design is influenced by the strong shadows, graphics, boxy shapes and angles of the comic book genre. The lighting complements the music
– and when the music really takes off it becomes a rock concert, a spectacle of lighting, colour and movement.
Audrey II, the 'mean green Mother from outer space', is looking a little different.
For the ATC production, the plant has been entirely re-imagined by Simon and designer Tracey Collins.
For a long time, the two tossed up whether they should stay true to the original design. But they were intrigued by doing something a bit darker, something more alternative. What clinched it was a conversation they had about the different stages of the plant.
"At first the plant is a baby, then a terrible toddler, then a rambunctious teenager that grows up to be a killer."
With ATC Artistic Director Colin McColl giving the team the blessing to go “down and dirty with it”, they began work on a new Audrey II.
It was decided that the big plants would be inflatables – easier said than done. It needed to be expressive, and come alive as a true character onstage. Oh, and eat people.
Tracey researched different types of exotic plants as well as deep sea fish and creatures – the otherworldly, hideous creatures at the bottom of the ocean, which, along with her research on what was possible to do with inflatables, fed into the designs. Tracey then went to work making many different models and refining the design direction. Four different puppets or ‘pods’ have been created to show the plant’s development.
The man behind Audrey II is Kyle Chuen, who has previously operated puppets in musical Avenue Q. Puppetering for Little
Shop, however, is on a much larger scale.
During rehearsals, Kyle had to improvise without the actual puppets. For the smaller hand controlled Audrey II, a puppet of a boy had to stand in for a plant, making for an amusing rehearsal picture when Seymour pretended to feed him blood. For the bigger puppets, Kyle had fashioned together bamboo sticks to emulate the mouth opening and closing.
In the third week of rehearsals, the cast had a ‘Plant Orientation’ where the large inflatable Audrey was blown up for
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26 everyone to see for the first time. Though still unpainted it made for an imposing sight – creepy tentacles with spikes, four pods that the eaten actor’s faces could be seen in, and a large buttock-like head.
The actors had great fun exploring the insides of the plant like an adventure playground. Paul Barret (Mushnik) described the sensation as like going inside the vaccum of an airplane, his ears popping as he ventured out.
Inside the big plant, there are handles on the canvas that allow Kyle to move it around.
“Because it’s inflatable it's got a lot of stretch to it, it's got a lot of give. It's not like the classic little shop puppet where its big and hard to use. This one has a lot of freedom to it.”
The most important thing for Kyle when operating the plant is being in synch with the voice of Audrey II, Rima Te
Wiata. He has learnt all the dialogue and in rehearsals he mouths the words as he moves the bamboo mouth. “Any movement is influenced by how she is making it sound.”
None of Audrey II’s songs have had to be rescored to cater for a female voice.
“She’s singing the same notes that’s it is scored for, which is a baritone voice, and she’s right down there, she can sing lower than I can” says Simon.
In rehearsals, Rima has had a microphone to use to experiment with and develop Audrey II’s voice.
“Having a microphone in rehearsals has helped us as a team of actors because it catapults the imagination, and makes the voice come through speakers, which is not an organic sound, it helps me feel enormous and alien. It helps me experiment with ways to use my voice. I have decided to capture aspects of hard rock and metal, as well as black funky sounds, depending on whether it serves the scene. I love it!”
Rima has approached the voice of
Audrey II from both a male and female perspective. “It gives me more to work with in terms of aggression and seduction.”
With the voice of Audrey II conventionally played by a man, Rima is an off-thewall choice that is really paying off.
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Simon and the cast have found new images to reinvent the characters slightly. Different influences were selected to guide the interpretations of the characters. Seymour was imagined as a Pee Wee Herman type, Audrey as Betty Boop, and
Mushnik as Christopher Lloyd from
Back to the Future.
Tim Carlsen plays Seymour.
He talked to James Wenley about building his character and approaching his first performance in a musical.
How have you approached the character of Seymour?
The approach I’ve made is firstly knowing the world that he lives in, and the way he lives and carries out his life. For example he lives on Skid Row, which is volatile and dangerous, so that effects the way he might be physically.
He might be alert and on the look out for danger.
Seymour is constantly looking for connection, and particularily he is looking for love; love through Audrey, trying to get love through Mushnik.
That’s something I can relate to because I go through life and also want to find connections and my place in the world, so that’s no different from
Seymour. So using observations from my own life and using that to build the way I approach Seymour.
How have you had to adjust to performing in a musical?
The most challenging part for me has been trying to tell the story through the song, not to separate the acting from the singing, really they are same kind of thing in the way they are performed.
There’s also a reason why they go into singing, and so its been finding that as well. Not just going ‘acting, acting’ and then ‘I’m going to sing a song’, which is what I have been struggling with because it’s so new to me.
Tim Carlsen is a graduate of Toi Whakaari:
NZ Drama School (2009). He has performed lead roles in: I LOVE YOU BRO, TARTUFFE
(Silo), END OF THE GOLDEN WEATHER
(Auckland Theatre Company) and
EVERYTHING IS OK (STAB). Tim recently toured his solo show, ONE DAY MOKO, to
Wellington's BATS Theatre, which received critical acclaim. In 2009, Tim completed an internship with renowned theatre company
THE WOOSTER GROUP, in New York City, that fostered his interest and development in making theatre. In 2011, Tim won 'Best
Newcomer' at the Hackman Theatre Awards.
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Alan Menken interviews:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8WJPNH-UZY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3Q6qvkEn4A
Howard Ashman article 1983
http://howardashman.com/blog/by-howard-ashman/
Alan Menken on building a Little Shop
http://howardashman.com/blog/building-a-little-shop/
ATC Education promotes and encourages teaching and participation in theatre and acts as a resource for secondary and tertiary educators. It is a comprehensive and innovative education programme designed to nurture young theatre practitioners and future audiences.
ATC Education has direct contact with secondary school students throughout the greater Auckland region with a focus on delivering an exciting and popular programme that supports the Arts education of
Auckland students and which focuses on curriculum development, literacy and the Arts.
Auckland Theatre Company acknowledges that the experiences enjoyed by the youth of today are reflected in the vibrancy of theatre in the future.
ATC Education activities relate directly to the PK, UC and CI strands of the
NZ Curriculum from levels 5 to 8. They also have direct relevance to many of the NCEA achievement standards at all three levels.
All secondary school Drama students (Years 9 to 13) should be experiencing live theatre as a part of their course work, Understanding the
Arts in Context. Curriculum levels 6, 7 and 8 (equivalent to years 11, 12 and
13) require the inclusion of New Zealand drama in their course of work.
The NCEA external examinations at each level (Level 1 – AS90011, Level 2
– AS90304, Level 3 – AS90612) require students to write about live theatre they have seen. Students who are able to experience fully produced, professional theatre are generally advantaged in answering these questions.
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