Word: shopped
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Little Shop is the story of Seymour Krelborn (Rick Moranis), a nebbishy orphan raised by a nearly bankrupt Skid Row florist, Mr. Mushnik (Vincent Gardenia). Seymour spends each day slaving away in Mushnik's shop, kept alive by his two loves: botany and Audrey (Ellen Greene), the dipsy platinum blonde store clerk. One day Seymour buys a mysterious plant from a Chinese merchant--a plant we later learn has come from outer space with intent to conquer the world...
...Little Shop's Faustian dilemma emerges when the plant wants something in return: blood. Named "Audrey II" by Seymour in honor of his dreamboat, the wisecracking, ghetto-smart plant (whose booming voice is performed by Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops) bellows "Feed me!" to the cringing Krelborn. How he deals with this unusual request is the problem of Little Shop...
...Little Shop adds little to the stage play, enlarging some of its jokes while totally blunting its few intentionally disturbing moments. What's left is a cartoony Skid Row where derelicts leap out of the gutter to sing and plants bounce about flower shops attacking everything in sight...
WHAT GAVE the staged Little Shop its appeal was the purity of its homage to Cliche. Writer and lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken built their Little Shop out of an inestimable number of dramatic, social, cinematic and musical commonplaces. Superficially, it followed the plot of the Corman picture, but it also obeyed dramatic rules enforced through the millenia: the Ashman/Menken Little Shop was a carefully structured Greek tragedy, replete with chorus, hero, dilemma, tragic flaw, catastrophic misstep and ultimate retribution. Snappy Chiffons-type songs and bouffant hairdos notwithstanding, the resolution of Little Shop was closer to that...
...there are plenty of laughs in Oz' Little Shop, whose cast of television loonies has long excelled at caricature. Some musical numbers are riotous, including the dental office song by Orin Scrivellos D.D.S. (Steve Martin), Audrey's doomed boyfriend, and a marvellous expansion of "Somewhere That's Green." In that number, Greene's lyrical depiction of her own Nirvana--Levittown--blessed with Tupperware and TV dinners is at once hilarious and pathetic...