"Little Shop of Horrors" at Stratford Festival

Stratford Festival production photo by Chris Young

We're making a quick stop at the Stratford Festival this year on our way to New York. Only two days here, but two plays each day. First up is a musical for everybody: Little Shop of Horrors. I've seen this on stage once before, and also enjoyed the musical version of the movie, so really, what could be bad?

The Play

I think this story is pretty well known. On Skid Row in New York City there is a flower shop run by Mr. Mushnik. He has two employees, Seymour (an orphan who Mushnik raised from childhood) and Audrey, the battered girlfriend of a sadistic dentist. Business is bad on Skid Row, and so is life. Just as Mushnik is about to give up and shutter the business, Seymour puts one of the exotic plants he raises as a hobby in the window. Suddenly, everything changes, seemingly for the better, but of course there is a price to pay.

As musicals go, the songs are mostly pretty good (written by the team of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, who combined to write a lot of successful Disney movie scores). But this is also an adaptation of a Roger Corman "B" movie from 1960, so it's a bit dark. All in all, that blends pretty well. Some of it is a bit dated, but like most older movies about even older periods, you have to look at the intentions of the time as well as the sensibilities of the present. For the most part, it works well.

The Production

As with every production I've seen at Stratford over the last two years, this one is excellently done. Great acting, design, and direction. This is a particularly tricky show to produce, requiring as it does some major mechanical puppetry, but it seemed to work pretty flawlessly. The lead actors all have strong voices, and the trio of singers who act as sort of a Greek chorus were really very good.

I didn't especially love the set design, which puts Mushnik's flower shop in a circle in the middle of the stage, but I also realize that all the mechanics required to handle the exotic plants limit what one can do. The projections in the background were fun and interesting.

Bottom Line

There's not a lot to say about this show. It's fun, and the production is top quality. The crowd loved it, and the run has been extended well into November. This is the kind of thing I've come to expect at Stratford.