‘Little Shop of Horrors’ Review: Jonathan Groff Feeds the Beast

@Loree - I can't believe no one's said this before, but it's not on google - Props for the props! And cheers to whoever came up with the concept of Jonathan Groff - who knows if this will translate to a Broadway house, but maybe they shouldn't try as scarcity of tickets are driving prices way up. What was pointed out in another section is true- Friday and Saturday tickets suddenly went up to $499 (plus the $5.50 service charge which brings it over $500). For some families in the artist-subsidized Manhattan Plaza right across the street, a pair of tickets to sit in the theater for two hours costs more than a month's rent for an apartment. Remembering when prices used to creep up $2.50 at a time, because really, who's going to pay $17.50 to sit in a theater seat for two and a half hours? Then when Liza Minnelli started charging $20 in "The Act," other shows took it slow until "Evita" braved $22.50. (In Brooklyn, we actually talked about it like Liza Minnelli was setting the prices. Seeing Broadway shows was affordable and just a normal part of so many typical middle class lives then. Straight guys sang "Pippin" songs in dorm showers then and everyone knew the words. It wasn't a luxury. )

@SLM Same here. $499 for this weekend . . . we are coming into town were existing to hear about this run. Oh well. I was a theater major . . . theater wasn't supposed to be for the rich and elite only. Oh well, maybe I'll go see Moulin Rouge instead. Wait . . those tickets are $300+ as well.

@Mike - Gideon Glick, who is a terrific talent, is taking the role for two weeks in November, and while there are no bargains, there are normal 2019 prices available for those performances, or at least there were this weekend. People with normal theatergoing budgets can see the production, and then see Mr. Groff later assuming this moves to Broadway, which seems pretty logical.

@Bill - Laurette Taylor could have done it.

@John - is there really no elevator in the entire building? Does that mean they carry the sections of the set up the stairs and build the set right there in the theater for the upstairs shows?

@John Get someone to carry you.

@Stevie Wow. Just...wow. I sincerely hope you can reconsider your response and find room for empathy.

@James Whelan - It’s so great that we can see past the surface and see what Audrey sees. (It must be tough for the audiences at Pasadena Playhouse too, seeing beyond the five pounds George Salazar put on to play Seymour there now. I saw them do the number on TV. By L.A. standards, that's morbidly obese.) Tune of “Stunningly Seymour” I’ve seen this show With the star who did “Brokeback”. On film, Rick Moranis was cute as a bug. But like Bradley Cooper When he played John Merrick, Give Jon a few minutes, you’ll stop saying “Ugh.” I suddenly see more Of what’s there inside him You think he’s a horror. As ugly as sin. What matters to me more? The morals that guide him Bring to the outside The beauty within.

@James Whelan...well duh!

@WRW - Lee Wilkof was supposed to be Mushnik on Broadway back in 2003 https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/20/theater/the-show-that-ate-the-original-cast.html and the circumstances of how that didn't happen now seem logical, all the senseless replacing of so many artists that they see as "That's show business. Sue us- but you'll never work in NYC again if you do" - as I've had Human Rights retaliation issues with the same producers. This can also be read in the light of it being 2019 and still there have been almost no female directors of musicals on Broadway (or black directors of musicals for that matter). There are a lot of variables in Broadway theater, but this is pretty much impossible to refute: When artists become expendable as if they were widgets on an assembly line, chances are 9 out of 10 that a Viertel is involved, likely insisting they had nothing to do with the decisions, but beating at the powerless victim's reputation rather than explaining why they did was needed - but Jack Viertel is there in the credits as sure as Zelig or Forrest Gump. (And that rare 1 or less in 10 tends to be a Rudin matter, at least in the 21st century, like the "Mockingbird" matter last March which he quickly corrected - but anyone who works with him knows what they're getting into and they still keep applying. And OMG, what inclusive work somehow comes from the Rudin office supported by the huge hits, so many years before inclusion was needed!)

I was asked what my back-up is. Except for my own situation with Human Rights retaliation claims being greeted with "bash the complainer's reputation, their approach of don't address the issue but make the complainer sound ridiculous and even mentally ill (???)" these were all in the press - just until I preparedly draft complaint, no one ever noticed a common thread: that the Viertels were there on every one of them. And in the four of the cases involving artists, the artist (black director Smokey Joe, female director Little Shop, actor who claimed human rights as temporarily disabled Hairspray, black songwriter A Christmas Story) somehow mysteriously never got another shot at working anther art in Ny commercial Ny theater again. https://combat-all-that-chat-bullies.blogspot.com/2018/09/to-jack-viertel-and-city-center-and.html They of course had no power over the female critic, but boy, the Herculean effort to destroy the person's reputation and qualifications for her job in 2017, then tried again a year later (through Smokey Joe marketing) when the first try didn't work and actually had made Jack Viertel look like a bully to so many in the community.

@Jack Lemay Yes, again. Since when has commercial theater been about art?

@Susan Hochberg Um ... why would anyone line up for a lottery hours in advance? Do they not understand how a lottery works?

@Susan Hochberg, just regarding "written by your favorite theater critic in your favorite" - Do we have to choose? I love Liza and I love Barbra and I Iove Patti and I love Hugh - there's no way I could choose. (I find that loving Bette or Lin-Manuel is too painful to deal with, because the seats just get way too expensive.) Here in our building, the critics we love most from any paper on any given day are the ones who most recently loved one of our gifted neighbors (or anyone we knew at BMI or ASCAP workshops, of course). When we don't know anyone in the show, we love all of them for helping guide us among this incredible explosion of theater. It makes no sense, but the premium era has inexplicably combined with the inclusion era and brought so much quality work and experimenting in theater. (So on your point - since Ben Brantley has been the constant through all of this, late 1990s when theaters were turning into churches and the UK imports dominated new product, to where theater has become so relevant now, is this going to associated with him by historians the way Brooks Atkinson got associated with the Golden Age pre-1960?).

This may seem silly, by the way, but the psychology of the film in this respect (Seymour's Frankenstein relationship to his girl) bears an interesting comparison to Vertigo. Both are very Freudian takes on male desire, suggesting a desire to recreate the mother in the love object (Kim Novak's matronly sexuality, the brown hair dyed silver on the male protagonist's insistence), indeed the whole premise of her reincarnatimg a deceased beauty.... But Little Shop distills sexual psychology to rawest, darkest essentials, reminscent of Murnau, the dentist of course being a bourgeois authority/father figure, both hyper-integrated and hyper violent/threatening...

Almost forgot my main point: Would Vertigo not make an utterly spectacular musical?? Which I had the chops to write it myself. I predict, though, that it will happen in the near future. It's begging to be made, begging. Just think of the possibilities: neo-expressionist sets creating San Francisco vistas, the Golden Gate, and a Frankenstein-Oedipal love story ultimately dealing with male narcissism and his quest to simultaneously create and appropriate a woman in the image of his mother. Freud may be slightly out of style, but never completely: it will always strike a chord because for all his faults and flaws Freud was onto something.

@Andrew Maltz The idea about a musical version is intriguing, but what about Bernard Herrmann's brilliant film score??? Can't compete with that!!!

@Alan Gary That seems like a mistake that's not only "unforgivable," but also bizarre and anomalous. Even school productions of the musical rent the plants that increase in size, and references to its growth are all over the book. Little chance--if that's what's actually going on at the Pasadena Playhouse--that it would have been replicated in a New York production.

@Opinionated Pedant , the Pasadena Playhouse production is not just a super-quiet regional production. The stars performed "Suddenly, Seymour" earlier this month on the James Corden show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkUPUc4Q6bg Mr. Corden had of course done the parody "James in the Bathroom / Josh in the Bathroom / Sara in the Bathroom" of George Salazar's showstopper from "Be More Chill" on the Tonys, and someone forgot to mention "Be More Chill" on the program. And there George Salazar is, with James Corden happily promoting Mr. Salazar on the Late Late Show. I guess they've all made up from that Tony show lapse, if they hadn't already made up. by 11:01 that Tony night! :)

@Alan Gary my daughter and I saw the Pasadena Playhouse show and I took the non-growing plant to be a suggestion that perhaps, it's all happening in Seymour's head and he's just murdering people because the voice in his head/Audrey 2 was telling him too. They do have larger puppets that come out during the death scenes, but they always revert to the small one. Also, the casting of a trans women of color completely changes the character of Audrey in the best possible way. Mj Rodriguez was just heartbreaking and we didn't miss the dumb blonde persona at all.