LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

 

The Santa Fe University Performing Arts Department presents LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS opening Friday evening April 20.  You'll love it whether you are unfamiliar with the story and music, or if you have seen it a hundred times!

Little Shop of Horrors, the musical by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, ran in an off-Broadway production beginning in 1982.  The film version, directed by Frank Oz, with Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, Vincent Gardenia and Steve Martin, was released in 1986, the same year that it came to GGT for the first time.  Come in to Fogelson Library and see the display near the entrance:  you will find photos and reviews from CSF's 1986 production, as well as other information about the evolution of the story behind the musical.

Cover for a DVD re-release of the original 1960 Little Shop Of Horros, produced and directed by Roger Corman.  (Do you recognize the very young Jack Nicholson in the cover photo? He has a small part in the movie.)

The musical was based on a 1960 movie by Roger Corman, king of the cult film.  In our display, you will see three books about Roger Corman and his movies, each of which includes information about Little Shop of Horrors.  For more information about Roger Corman, see call number “PN1998.3 .C68” on the lower level, and check the library’s catalog for some of his movies that we have in our DVD and VHS collections.  (Sadly, we do not have Ski Troop Attack, Bucket of Blood,or my personal favorite The Wasp Woman.)

Roger Corman in 2006. Photo by JaSunni .  (Used through Creative Commons licensing, commons.wikimedia.org.)

In researching the background of Little Shop of Horrors, some anonymous references cropped up indicating that Corman and his co-writer, Charles B. Griffith, got the idea for their screenplay from a short story by John Collier entitled "Green Thoughts." "Green Thoughts" was first published in the May 1931 issue of Harper's Magazine.  In Collier's story, the plant--an ugly orchid bought at auction from an explorer to some unnamed exotic place--eats and digests a couple of proper British cousins and a cat, whose faces are reproduced in the flowers that bloom on the plant!

The evolution of the plant through these stories is interesting.  In 1931 it is an orchid from some savage unexplored, but earthly, place.  In 1960, Griffith and Corman have Seymour getting the seeds "from a Japanese gardener over on Central Avenue.  He found them in with an order he got from a plantation next to a cranberry farm."  Whether this is supposed to be a reference to post-WW2 Japan is an intriguing question.   Then in 1982, Ashman changes the plant's origin to outer space:  "While [Seymour] was browsing the wholesale flower district, a sudden eclipse of the sun occurred, and when the light returned, the weird plant had appeared." This plant is supposed to look like a large Venus Fly-Trap. Seymour realizes later on in the story that his plant, Audrey II, came from an unknown planet with the goal of conquering the Earth.

The creativity that goes into designing the Audrey II puppet is one of the elements that preserves Little Shop of Horrors' standing as a popular musical for school, college, and community theatre groups.  Here are some renditions of Audrey II from photostreams of Flickr.com members.  Thanks to all the photographers for sharing the rights to these photos.

 

Audrey II, by "Spyderella" (Sharon). (personal creation, 2008)

Audrey II, by "Drurydranma" (Len Radin)  (Drury Drama Team, Drury High School
North Adams, Massachusetts, 2005) 

         
   Audrey II, by "Pinprick" (Amanda). (Coupeville High School Drama Department, Coupeville, WA. 2011.)

 

Audrey II, by "gamelaner" (Tony). (Henry Sibley High School Theatre Dpt., Mendota Heights, MN.2010)

Audrey II, by "KwaziiCat" (LornaNiese). (Dennyloanhead, Scotland, UK. 2010.)