Before guiding audiences through an Arabian night in “Aladdin,” crafting a tale as old as time in “Beauty and the Beast” or making sure “The Little Mermaid” became a part of our world, the late and legendary lyricist Howard Ashman found his home on the stage. Often in a “Little Shop of Horrors.”
Ashman conceived, wrote and directed the hit musical in 1982 with composer Alan Menken, his frequent collaborator with whom he would later revitalize Walt Disney Animation. It was adapted from the 1960 film of nearly the same name, a dark comedy about a man growing a plant that craves blood.
The musical enjoyed a five-year run Off-Broadway and quickly found its way overseas. It also inspired the 1986 film starring Rick Moranis and Steve Martin, featuring even more music from the duo.
Multiple revivals have followed in the years since, a testament to Ashman’s vision. On stage, productions have starred fellow LGBTQ icons like Jonathan Groff and Michaela Jae Rodriguez while on screen, work has begun on another version starring Billy Porter as Audrey II, the show’s main plant-agonist.
Tampa’s Straz Center for the Performing Arts has also produced a version. Originally scheduled for 2020 but delayed due to the pandemic, it opened in the Jaeb Theater April 6 and plays through May 1.
“A sadistic singing dentist, an enormous people-eating plant and plenty of doo-wop interludes, ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ is a laugh-out-loud toe-tapping thing of nightmares,” the production is officially described. “Despite that, it’s a love story. Of sorts.
“When flower shop clerk Seymour adopts an adorable but toothy baby plant and names it after the object of his affection, good intentions quickly pave a highway to hell in this campy dark-comedy sing-along,” its synopsis continues. “Feed us, Seymour!”
The production is directed by David Jenkins – also the co-founder and producing artistic director of Jobsite Theater, the Straz’s resident theatre company – who says its premiere was a long time coming.
“We originally cast the show around three years ago,” he explains. “In 2019, the Straz Center was looking at getting back into doing in-house productions, which they hadn’t done in a number of years. For a variety of factors they quit doing it, so the space began being rented out to Jobsite or touring shows, things like that.
“They picked a few productions to do in 2020-2021 and we went as far as to cast both ‘Shout! The Mod Musical’ [which ran Aug.-Sept. 2021] and ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ from the same audition – and then, of course, the world shut down.”
Soon after the rescheduling began. “Little Shop” was initially moved from Fall 2020 to Summer 2021 but postponed again. “We all thought we were going to be home for six to eight weeks,” Jenkins remembers. “We ended up opening this show basically three years from when we first auditioned it.”
Most surprising, he adds, is that the entire original cast was able to return.
“None of us believe it, actually,” Jenkins explains. “After all this time, every single one of us that were in that audition room are coming back and doing the show. That was never a certainty, but we got the whole team back together. It’s wild.”
That team consists of talent from throughout Tampa Bay and Central Florida, like Orlando’s Fo’i Meleah. The openly LGBTQ entertainer and Jenkins had previously worked together on “Lizzie: The Musical” and “The Threepenny Opera,” and he always envisioned her in the role of Audrey II.
“When the Straz Center gave me the opportunity to direct this show, I said, ‘Awesome, I’ll do it. I’ve already got somebody I want to play the voice of the plant,’” Jenkins says. “It was hers from the jump.”
“David and I had worked together in the past and about three years ago he reached out to offer me the role,” Meleah says. “I was immediately in, no questions asked.”
As time went on, however, she and her castmates weren’t certain when or how “Little Shop” would come to be. “We all thought it would be a year, turns out it was three,” she says. “It was a little bit longer of a wait than we thought, but we’re so excited to be here because of it.”
Meleah was a longtime fan of the show, at least on screen. She says it captivated her from a young age.
“It was one of the first movie musicals that I ever watched where I felt like I was really taken into the world,” she says. “And it takes a good amount of suspending your disbelief to believe that there’s a man-eating plant that everyone is singing about.”
Jenkins also had a long history with the production, which he calls a classic.
“I went to a performing arts high school and actually performed songs from ‘Little Shop’ for theater class,” he says. “I’ve voiced Audrey II before. I’ve played Seymour. I haven’t had anything to do with the show in a number of years, but now to be able to get into the director’s chair – coupled with all of my own nerdy fandoms like sci-fi and horror – it’s been a real treat.”
Meleah researched multiple “Little Shop” productions to find her Audrey II voice, a role she approached with caution.
“I’ve seen a lot of great drag queens do it and Amber Riley did it recently,” she says. “It has traditionally been played by someone who is Black and I didn’t want to do anything close to a Blackscent. The way the role is written, there’s an energy [similar to African American Vernacular English], and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t offensive in any way.
“Being a brown person myself, I’ve seen so many people put on affected voices, especially since I was looking at so many Audrey II performances,” she continues. “That was a full no go for me and thankfully the cast and creative team were very helpful in making sure I felt comfortable to make the choices I have. Audrey II still has a lot of funk and it feels natural.”
The character’s puppeteers play a key role in that, particularly while matching Meleah’s live vocals.
“For the majority of the show I’m off stage, but we’re doing something that’s really cool,” she explains. “I’m up top with the band on the balcony, so we’re able to communicate with each other. I don’t have to do what Audrey II usually has to, which is watch the acting from a monitor. I’m truly able to see everything that’s happening live, just higher up.”
As for the puppets, Jenkins says they range from “a little coffee can-sized guy to a plant that literally covers the stage.” The final prop towers above the audience at 6 foot 8 inches tall.
The Straz enlisted the Davenport, Florida-based ImaginationWorks to make that a reality. The company has built and rented versions of the “Little Shop of Horrors” icon for more than 25 years.
“Odds are that if you’ve seen a professional production of ‘Little Shop’ anywhere in the Southeast in the past 10 years, you’ve seen their plants,” Jenkins says. Four puppets are rented from owner Scott Cook, also the artistic director for Polk County’s Theater Works Florida.
The first puppet is “Audrey II on her last legs,” it’s officially described. “Hidden within the sickly exterior are new leaves and vine that are revealed when the plant grows.”
The second is around four times larger and is operated by the cast with the “the old ‘fake arm’ trick.” The third requires a puppeteer to utilize their entire body from inside while the fourth plant, the largest, represents Audrey II “in all its terrifying glory.” It takes a small team to fully animate.
The rental includes detailed, in-person instructions from Cook, who also provides training. “This helps not only the client, but also me, so I know the plants are being handled safely,” he told the Straz. “It’s important to me that my clients are happy and they know what they’re doing.”
“I call them my girls,” he added. “When I rent them it’s like sending your child to college. I think about them all the time and I want to call and see if they’re all right. I really do love them but I think it’s because I love the show so much.”
Jenkins says the entire cast does as well. “I think part of it is because there’s a certain kinship since this was three years in waiting,” he explains, “but you can tell everyone in the room is invested in what they’re doing.
“Honestly, they’ve done all the work for me,” he also muses. “The role of a director in musical theater is usually the last thing anybody really cares about, because people come to see the choreography and hear the songs. They’re just on fire and have made my job very easy.”
The final product is something longtime fans of the show as well as first-time viewers can enjoy, particularly LGBTQ audiences. Jenkins says one of its universal themes deals with the desire to live authentically.
“Even though they’re a cisgender, heterosexual couple, Audrey and Seymour are living under the shadows of other people and society, unable to be who they are,” Jenkins says. “These people are in close proximity to one another but it takes so much for them to make a connection.”
It’s a subtext that has run through much of Ashman’s work, themes which are prevalent in the show.
“Clearly to step outside of the play, when you look at who Ashman is in context of musical theater history, he’s literally an icon,” Jenkins says. “Not only from Broadway, but to Disney and then back to Broadway.
“If you listen closely to the music in ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ you will find bits of ‘The Little Mermaid,’ of ‘Aladdin’ and so many other things that Ashman did later in his career. I wasn’t even aware of it until we started working on the show. It’s been amazing.”
The show also tackles capitalism, Meleah stresses, a message that isn’t lost in the production.
“At its core it’s about how it sways all of us, and I feel like as a members of the LGBTQ community, we’re constantly having to make concessions to our art for capitalism, or to what we do professionally or to just being ourselves,” she says.
“We want to be ourselves, but I don’t think capitalism really allows us to be,” Meleah concludes. “The show takes that to a very heightened area and the LGBTQ community can really relate to that message.”
Jenkins notes that it’s also just highly entertaining.
“This is the kind of thing people want to see right now, even though it’s about a man-eating plant and a bunch of people die in it,” he laughs. “If you enjoy live music and live theater, come embrace its lightheartedness because these voices and harmonies are just stunning. Come and have a good time.”
“Little Shop of Horrors” plays Wednesdays–Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 2 and 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. in the Jaeb Theater of the Straz Center for the Performing Arts, located at 1010 N. Macinnes Pl. in Tampa. To purchase tickets and for more information, visit StrazCenter.org.
