Anyone who’s been wondering if Jonathan Groff is too handsome to play the schlubby Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors can stop worrying right now.
Ludicrous as it sounds, naysayers thought that Groff’s leading-man looks—which served him so well as the 19th-century bad boy Melchior in the Tony-winning Spring Awakening, as the show tune–singing bad boy Jesse St. James on TV’s Glee, and currently as the bad boy–obsessed FBI agent Holden Ford on the Netflix series Mindhunter—would hamper his portrayal of theater’s most famous green-thumbed geek. But he’s actually ideally cast: Naturally, he sings like a dream, whether serenading the bruised and broken Audrey (Tammy Blanchard) in “Suddenly Seymour” or her blood-thirsty namesake potted plant, Audrey II (voiced by Kingsley Leggs, brought to life by Nicholas Mahon and Monkey Boys Productions), in “Grow for Me.” More important, he’s immensely sincere—even when doing outrageous things like feeding his flower-shop boss/surrogate father Mr. Mushnik (Tom Alan Robbins) to the carnivorous Audrey II. Wait…you knew this was a musical about a man-eating vegetable, right?
[Read Jesse Oxfeld’s ★★★★ review here.]
“Simplicity, honesty, and sincerity” are the qualities the late Howard Ashman, the show’s librettist and lyricist, demands of the actors in the author’s note prefacing the script, and this Michael Mayer–helmed revival possesses all three in spades. In 1995, Mayer directed Hundreds of Hats—a revue of songs Ashman wrote with Marvin Hamlisch, Jonathan Scheffer, and Alan Menken (his composer on Little Shop, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and more)—at the WPA Theatre, where Little Shop premiered in 1982; Mayer knows the tone to strike: shrewd, sentimental, and‚ yes, sincere. There’s no other way to bring across the beautifully unadorned lyrics, and wistful melody, to Audrey’s suburban-fantasy ballad, “Somewhere That’s Green”: “A matchbox of our own/ A fence of real chain link/ A grill out on the patio/ Disposal in the sink/ A washer and a drier and/ An ironing machine/ In a tract house that we share/ Somewhere that’s green.”
It’s easy camp up Little Shop; but even comic chameleon Christian Borle, one of the most expert scenery chewers around (he’s got a pair of Tonys to prove it), resists the impulse to go over-the-top as the sadistic, nitrous oxide–addicted Orin Scrivello, D.D.S. (He also plays a wino, an NBC exec, a William Morris agent, and about 67 other bit parts.) He goes right to the edge of the top—has death by laughing gas ever been so hilarious?—but never steps over.
The revival isn’t Broadway-slick, and that’s to its advantage. Mostly, it’s a thrill to see Little Shop in a small (i.e., under 300 seats) theater, where it belongs. No matter how many times you’ve seen the show—off-Broadway, on Broadway, on tour, at Encores!, at your community theater, at countless high schools across America—the hook-filled, doo-wop–style tunes, easily Menken’s best score, sound just as good as you remember.
Little Shop of Horrors opened Oct. 19, 2019, and runs through Jan. 19, 2020, at the Westside Theatre. Tickets and information: littleshopnyc.com
