Little Shop of Horrors

a comedy horror musical

Mr Mutchnik’s flower shop is an out-of-the-way store which is seldom visited by any customers. Hence, its owner is grumpy and he never smiles at his two helpers – the rash, naïve Seymour and the sweet Audrey who is haunted by life. However, everything changes one day when Seymour, during a solar eclipse, buys a strange plant in an exotic shop. A plant which he has never seen and the name of which he couldn’t find in any of the clever books, a plant which makes a change in the lives of all those present. Seymour names it Audrey 2, in honour of the girl that he meets every day and whom he loves platonically, though she dates a sadistic dentist, Orin. Only the one small moment when the strange plant appears in the flower shop window is enough to make the shop extremely popular. Every passer-by wants to want to have a closer look at this plant which looks a bit like an avocado and a bit like a carnivorous plant. The cash box is starting to fill but Audrey 2 starts to wilt until Seymour discovers by chance the kind of watering his plant is longing for. Human blood! Seymour starts to look for food for it, the plant grows and the whole world is interested in this strange plant, while her owner becomes a famous person and tries to hide the true nature of the monster he has grown. The musical black comedy Little Shop of Horrors was created by Howard Ashman (libretto) and Alan Menken (music) based on an American low-budget film from the year 1960, where the brutal dentist was acted by Jack Nicholson as one of his first roles. The authors adapted the story, added sixties-style rock´n´roll and presented it off-Broadway in 1982. Since then, the musical has become famous all over the world and in 1986, a famous Oscar-nominated film version was made under the direction of Frank Oz.