Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Musical? It might sound strange, but Hoof 'n' Horn's Little Shop of Horrors, coming to Sheafer Theater this weekend, is a satirical, rock and rolling production that features carnivorous alien vegetation the size of most dorm rooms. Instead of having robots quipping jokes, as in Mystery Science Theater, Little Shop of Horrors has a trio of doo-wopping, candy-colored chorus members comically crooning.
The original Little Shop of Horrors is a cult 1960 B-rate science-fiction motion picture thriller, also known as The Passionate People Eater. The film even includes an appearance by a young Jack Nicholson as a dental patient. The Hoof 'n' Horn production could be a similar opportunity to see an up-and-coming actor--Seth Weitberg, a member of Duke University Improv, blossoms in his stage debut as the nebbishy experimental botanist Seymour Krelborn.
Fellow cast member Greg Anderson shows off his range in a mercurial performance of 10 different characters. In the funky number "The Meek Shall Inherit", Anderson changes into three different characters backstage within a span of seconds, a feat which would leave Clark Kent baffled. As a sadistic dentist addicted to nitrous oxide, Anderson will make you feel like you have had a healthy dose of laughing gas.
The seemingly child-friendly songwriting duo of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken adapted the original film into a long-running Broadway musical. They are also the masterminds behind such Disney classics as The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. We've all heard about subtle Disney sexual innuendos (think Aladdin, "All good teenagers, take off your clothes"), but when Hoof 'n' Horn hit the stage during rehearsal, the raunchy humor of Little Shop was in full effect.
Just like Ashman and Menken's Disney scores, Little Shop of Horrors features music that ranges from doo wop to funk to monster rock ballads. The band is featured prominently on the intimate set, and includes several campus rock stars from the Alan Davis Band. The cast and the band feed off each other throughout, with cast members occasionally tossing tips into a top hat.
The signature element of this show has always been Audrey II, the giant plant that makes Venus fly traps look like garnish, and this production features four of these puppet plant pods on loan from a recent Greensboro College production.
But with these lavish props comes an element of danger. While the play calls for Seymour to feed the plant human blood, Weitberg didn't realize it'd be his own.
"The damn teeth always graze my head, and the hinge left me this scab on my hand," he said.
The payoff for all this bloodshed: Little Shop is two hours of straight fun. Stabs at higher meaning ultimately fall dead. Farokh Irani, the voice behind Audrey II, said, "Some people go with the Faustian theme with the whole greed and damnation thing. But I don't know if I believe that." And Carl Pearson, the man who operates the body of Audrey II, posited that drug use was an obvious influence since a plant plays such a big role in the play.
Who knows what the real theme is and frankly, if a production is this enjoyable, who really cares?
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