Review: Hilarious 'Little Shop' hits the mark
11:41 PM CDT on Wednesday, August 11, 2004
By LAWSON TAITTE / The Dallas Morning News
Little Shop of Horrors is the definitive American rock opera, we're beginning to realize, and it finally has its definitive production.
Wednesday, the Dallas Summer Musicals gave the national tour of the late-blooming Broadway version its official press opening at Fair Park Music Hall. If the show had been this well-cast on the Great White Way, it wouldn't be closing in 10 days.
Howard Ashman's book and lyrics and Alan Menken's music worked a one-of-a-kind miracle here. The silly-scary story about a nebbish flower shop clerk who discovers a strange plant with mysterious powers never violates the limits of musical comedy. It's clever, even hilarious. But beneath the surface stirs a genuinely tragic version of the Faust legend: A guy sells his soul to get what he craves, only to find it spoiled by his bad decisions.
The inimitably catchy score combines early rock and R&B sounds with the best storytelling skills of the American musical theater. You tap your toes, barely resisting the urge to hum along, as the characters and the Motown-style backup singers jive and gyrate. For all the fun the songs generate, they get to some amazingly deep places.
Director Jerry Zaks and choreographer Kathleen Marshall work the piece for honest characterization as well as for big laughs. In New York, they must have felt constrained to hire performers who had caused some recent buzz in the Broadway theater world. The touring cast consists almost entirely of actors better suited to the roles.
The best known, Anthony Rapp of Rent fame, does astounding things as Seymour. He never exaggerates the character's slobby cluelessness for cheap laughs, but he brings down the house with the longest double takes you ever saw. He jerks his body to show what a klutz he is or to express frustration, but he sings with a delicate strength that gets every word across.
Tari Kelly milks every nasal diphthong that Audrey, the girl whom Seymour loves from afar, speaks or sings for its ultimate comic potential. But when these two finally express their affection in the show's best song, "Suddenly, Seymour," there's deep emotion and more laughs.
The tour makes the wicked plant even more monstrous than it was on Broadway. Purists worried that this "little musical" was being swollen out of scale. But the big feelings and the big sound that Little Shop of Horrors stir up make a plant as big as a T-Rex entirely plausible – and a whole lot of fun to quake at.
E-mail ltaitte@dallasnews.com
Little Shop of Horrors, presented by Dallas Summer Musicals at Fair Park Music Hall through Aug. 21. Runs 130 min. Tickets $11 to $75. Call Ticketmaster at 214-631-2787 or go to www.ticketmaster.com.