When Trash Is a Treasure

By RICHARD CORLISS

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

Book and Lyrics by Howard Ashman; Music by Alan Menken

In the popular arts, these are the glory days of trash. The entertainment industry is staying alive by marketing the guilty secrets of its past. Summer movies have taken for their inspiration cult comic books, old TV shows, old horror and boxing movies, even old Walt Disney cartoons. Nonfiction bestsellers discreetly exploit the misery of movie stars, while Stephen King's novels borrow from E.G. comics and AIP movies. Even Broadway, long thought immune to adolescent fancies, has jumped on the trash bandwagon--at least in its musicals. Composers, librettists and directors ransack old Hollywood movies (42nd Street) and newer foreign films ("Nine"). They bow to rock 'n' roll for their subject matter (Dreamgirls) or their urgent tempo (Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat). They find their heroines in comic strips (Annie) or in history that reads like cheap fiction (Evita). The message sounds clear as a cash-register bell: the way to make a hit is to recycle pulp into pop.

So why shouldn't a musical comedy be spawned from one of the trashiest, cheapest B movies ever made? The Little Shop of Horrors was shot in 1960 by Schlockmeister Roger Gorman on a frayed-shoestring budget (way under $100,000), using no-name actors (including a 23-year-old Jack Nicholson) on grungy sets left over from another picture. It was filmed in an impossible two days. But Screenwriter Charles B. Griffith extracted 70 minutes of fast, daft humor from his blending of the horror and science-fiction genres.

Seymour Krelboin, a nebbishy lad who works in Mushnik's Skid Row Flower Shop, is in love with Mr. Mushnik's daughter Audrey. By crossing a butterwort with a Venus's-flytrap, Seymour creates a new plant type, which he calls Audrey Jr. and which, it happens, feeds on human blood. As it feeds, it grows, until it has spread over the entire store. Soon the notoriety of Audrey Jr. brings the little shop more business than it can handle. But there is a catch in this Faustian bargain: Seymour must oblige the plant's noisy demands to "Feed me!" by offering it the bodies of a derelict, a prostitute and a sadistic dentist. Will Seymour and Audrey consummate their love? Will Audrey Jr. devour them both? Will this outre material make for a good musical comedy?

To Question 3, a ringing affirmative. The tiny stage of off-Broadway's Orpheum Theater is apulse with the engaging beat of Alan Menken's pastiche of infant rock 'n' roll. Librettist-Lyricist Howard Ashman has adhered to Griffith's plot with becoming fidelity, while sending it up by adding a funky chorus of observers: three black girl singers in tight skirts and tighter harmonies. In the show Audrey Jr. is Audrey II, and at the outset is a tiny terror: Pac-Man's mean mutant brother. By the show's climax, it envelops the stage and (gasp!) most of the audience. This is a carnivore with its own intimidating charm, thanks to clever manipulation by Martin P. Robinson and the voice of Ron Taylor, who sounds like Paul Robeson crossed with an air-raid siren.

Lee Wilkof is fine as Seymour, the mass murderer with a heart of buttercream chocolate. But the spotlight belongs to Ellen Greene. Her Audrey is a sweet, sexy, slightly dizzy blond with an Elmer Fudd lisp and wittle-girl wiles. Then Greene sings--and the theater walls buckle in awe at her volume and power. In her solo, Somewhere That's Green, in which she dreams of a home with every consumer cliche the '50s could offer, and in her second-act duet with Wilkof, she proves that Ellen Greene, not Audrey II, is the wildest force of nature on the Orpheum stage. With her signal help, Little Shop answers the question: Can trash material be transformed into a funny, classy night at the theater? This trash can.

-- By Richard Corliss

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