Little Shop Of Horrors

The official script states that modifications may be made if authorized in writing.

Hm. Guess I may be wrong there.

I'm the second biggest fan of this show there is. The number one fan is Ooze, who is unfortunately no longer with us. He is currently suffering eternal bannation in the fiery depths of internet hell.

I'm currently planning on getting a tattoo of Audrey II's silhouette. I just need to find a decent picture.

Instead of praising the show to the high heavens, I'll talk about things I don't like. Because complaining is fun!

I don't like people who say the show is about a man-eating plant. For example,

Person A: What's Little Shop of Horrors? Person B: It's a musical about a man-eating plant.

NO. Here's how the conversation SHOULD go.

Person A: What's Little Shop of Horrors? Person B: It's a musical about a man living in poverty who is driven to commit horrific acts because of his own desires.

The plant is just the vehicle. Sure, the plant is IMPORTANT, both as a villain and as a plot device. But saying Little Shop of Horrrors is about a plant is like saying...well, using something P Down said, Faust is about a devil.

I also don't like people who think this show is a flat-out comedy.

It is NOT.

If you happened to see a production that portrayed the sad scenes comedic, that just means the director was more familiar with the movie adaption. You should NOT judge the play based on its movie adaption, especially in this case.

edited 21st Apr '11 4:55:33 AM by TacoWiz

I'm sorry, but your use of the phrase "It is NOT" made me read that in the voice of Tommy Wiseau and I was unable to take it seriously, though I pretty much agree with it.

I'd accuse you of being embarrassed of the man-eating plant if you weren't planning to get a tattoo of the thing, Taco Wiz. Sounds kind of like a Sci Fi Ghetto issue. I think Like Reality, Unless Noted drives people to mention the weirdest parts of the premise first, because it's jarring to do otherwise. Really, deliberately jarring someone with the fantastic points might serve to highlight them even more.

Barring the more action-movie brand of science fiction, you could also argue that most sci fi/fantasy uses the fantastic elements as vehicles for broader themes and character arcs.

I'd like to see a bigger budget production of the play, though that probably applies to everything I saw as a high school production. Not to twist the knife about the plant, but it would be cool to see the play somewhere where they really had the budget to go all out with the costume/set design in the second act.

{Please don't speculate about the motives of other posters. They aren't the topic here. The show is. — Madrugada}

edited 1st May '11 4:10:19 PM by Madrugada

Yeah, Little Shop of Horrors isn't about a man-eating plant, but that is the first thing drawing me to it, besides the delightfully catchy tunes.

I love to see the different plants assembled for different productions, especially when they're designed from the ground up instead of borrowing directly from the film (which, I will say, is one of the best and most beautiful Hollywood films of the past thirty years, regardless of the butchered ending). I've seen photos of one that resembled a huge pumpkin or tomato with lips, a cactus-like Audrey II and one in an awesome pitcher-plant style. If you asked me to design Audrey II myself, I might go with the "Corpse Flower" Amorphophallus titanum [1] as a starting point.

Issues have arisen with the tattoo.

I found something else eating up my money: a deal with an animation art dealer.

Now I'm frantically trying to raise the money before June 31st...

with help from HOMER SIMPSON!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180671139797

Bump?

We did this in school last year and somehow a third of our pit band was grade 10 (including me). We pulled through, but I'm wondering if our teacher wasn't pulling a Batman Gambit to make us practice more - the other trumpet and I were both pulling at least 4 hours of practice a day by the last month to make up for the fact that we had a combined 1 year of experience.

Everyone suffered from LSOH withdrawal for the rest of the year; I still have all the music memorized on trumpet and vocals. For a few months afterwards if we heard anyone say anything that sounded like a line from the play, we'd start quoting it until we got to and finished at least 1 song.

Anyways, it was an amazingly stressful yet awesome experience.

Whenever I meet someone who was involved with a LSOH production, I inform them that they've lived my dream. So I am here, right now, informing you.

Sorry to necro this after 5 and a half years (!) but I have to share this brainwave I had. Context: I've always wanted to voice the plant. One problem; I'm white as they come (albeit with a baritone that can be dark as hell...plus my low G just popped out after years of struggling to hold anything below A without having it be deep fried). Then it hit me. LSOH is based on the Faust myth, right? So why not play up the Louis Cypher esque dealbroker part of the role while deemphasizing the Ebonics aspect? That way, no one gets offended over Modern Minstrelsy implications, and the core of the character (a leafy green Mephistopheles) stays intact. Yay or nay?

edited 12th Apr '17 6:16:31 AM by Theatre_Maven_3695

Not sure. I am white and wanted to voice Audrey II but lost the part to a more talented white guy my last year of high school. Sorry no one answered sooner.

No problem. This section of the forums is pretty dead unfortunately.

I'm a little disappointed this forum is so dead. I just came across it and I'd love to discuss this show (one of my dream productions) with others, but...sigh.

Nothing much could be done with a dead thread like this unless some people just started talking about this musical again.

I would like to propose a discussion here. I'm sure the different endings of the movie and show have been talked about ad nauseam, but I've always thought that neither ending is particularly satisfying. The movie one is rightly criticized for messing up the moral, but I also find the original ending to be so bleak and over-the-top that it doesn't really fit with the rest of the story. My ideal ending would be somewhere in the middle: Audrey and Seymour still get eaten, but then the plant would fly off into space having finished its "growth period" and back to its home planet. What do other people think about this idea?

reminds me too much of Poochy from that one Simpsons episode leaving even if the tones are different. Audrey II just decides to leave the Earth after eating Seymour and Audrey?

Haha, that's a good point. My head canon is that these aliens get sent to other planets to get the nutrition they need to grow and then return once they're done.

I would have liked if Audrey survived even if Seymour dies. I like the idea of Seymour being punished, but Audrey being collateral damage just kind of rubs me the wrong way.

I've wondered a lot about an alternate universe in which Audrey feeds the plant instead. Has anybody written fanfic about that?

I guess you could say that Audrey's death shows how immoral actions hurt the people you love as well as yourself, but it could probably be removed if necessary.

I thought it also had to do with Seymour being the botanist and Audrey doing... I don't know. Audrey would be possibly more of an Audience Surrogate for not knowing how to treat this weird plant for a while.

There's a thread for this? Nice!

• checks that it hasn't been updated in almost a year*

...Well, whatever.

Not sure how weird it is that Orin somehow became my favorite character. Ah well, Now (It's Just The Gas) is a good song, so...(really should've been adapted into the movie as well, even if it was pretty dark).

And now your yearly bump for the LSOH thread.

I once did “Green Mean Mother From Outer Space” for school karaoke. It was a damn fun time.