A Little Story About Little Shop of Horrors

harlequin productions
Harlequin Productions stages it's shows in the Historic State Theater in downtown Olympia.
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Submitted by Harlequin Productions

On May 5, Harlequin Productions opens Little Shop of Horrors by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. Little Shop has become one of the most popular musicals in Broadway history, but the story of how this musical became the hit show it is today is as “strange and interesting” as the little plant that Seymour brings to the shop one day.

The story begins with John Collier (1901-1980), a British author and screenplay writer. In 1932, the New York Times published a short story of his called “Green Thoughts,” about a man-eating plant.

Fast forward to the mid-1950s. American independent film director Roger Corman was working hard to make a name for himself. He was coming off a series of early projects, including the not-so-successful Swamp Women (1955), and decided to search for a new writer. Johnny Haze, an actor and friend, introduced Corman to Charles B. Griffith, who Corman hired in late 1955.

“I got into the habit of writing very quickly without realizing it and, because I was raised in a radio family, I didn’t know that you were supposed to take a long time to write a film script,” said Griffith. Corman was drawn to Griffith’s fast and loose writing style, and the two collaborated on several B-horror films including Gunslinger (1956) and Beast from Haunted Cave (1957).

In 1958, Griffith showed Corman his latest screen play. Corman was hesitant because Griffith was mixing in more humor than his earlier work and venturing further into the black comedy genre, a sort of dark comic satire type of work. Griffith eventually convinced Corman to greenlight the project and the result was A Bucket of Blood (1959). This was Griffith and Corman’s first experiment in the genre. They would eventually be known as pioneers of black comedy.

A Bucket of Blood was about a young, meek busboy named Walter who worked for a money-hungry club owner. Walter yearned for the heart of a waitress working in the club. After accidently killing his landlord’s cat, Walter gets the idea to cover it in clay to create a hyper-realistic “sculpture.” Tempted by the fame and the hope of using it to win the affection of his crush, Walter takes to turning people into “sculptures” before his secret is finally revealed.

A Bucket of Blood was shot in five days, but the production team had rented the film studio for seven and a half days. Roger Corman made a bet with a friend that he could film a second full-length film on the same set using only the remaining two and a half days. He told Griffith to get him a script immediately.

Griffith reworked the plot of A Bucket of Blood to write The Little Shop of Horrors. Walter was renamed Seymour, the money-hungry club manager became a money-hungry shop owner named Mushnik, and instead of being tempted to cover people in clay in the name of fame (and love), Seymour would be tempted to feed people to a giant talking plant for the same reasons. Griffith has said that he read John Collier’s “Green Thoughts” years earlier and had been looking for a way to get a man-eating plant into a movie ever since. Griffith was given an $800 bonus for writing this second script.

Roger Corman won his bet. The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) was filmed in two days and one night on the same set as A Bucket of Blood. Johnny Haze, who originally introduced Corman and Griffith, starred as Seymour while an unknown actor named Jack Nicholson made his film debut as a patient of a mad dentist.

A Bucket of Blood was received with mixed reviews upon its release, and Roger Corman didn’t have high expectations for The Little Shop of Horrors when it was released the next year. His feelings were only reinforced when the film was left out of the lineup for the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. Corman felt there were no financial possibilities for the film, and did not even bother to copyright it.

However, positive word of mouth of the film began to spread, and momentum suddenly began to build. Jack Nicholson recalled a 1961 screening by saying “The audience laughed so hard I could barely hear the dialogue. I didn’t quite register it right. It was as if I had forgotten it was a comedy since the shoot. I got all embarrassed because I’d never really had such a positive response before.” The film’s popularity slowly grew with local television broadcasts throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Enter Alan Menken and Howard Ashman.

Ashman was already an established playwright when he chose Menken to write the music for his 1979 musical adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Ashman and Menken worked so well together that they decided to take on another writing project right away. The two enjoyed adapting their last piece from an established work and concluded that they should do so again, only this time using a story with a smaller cast. The Little Shop of Horrors was the perfect choice: it had a small cast, it had been gaining in popularity for several years, and best of all, it wasn’t copyrighted.

Their musical, Little Shop of Horrors, premiered off-off-Broadway on March 6, 1982, before moving to the Orpheum Theatre off-Broadway where it had a successful five-year run. The musical, which Ashman directed, received critical acclaim and won numerous awards including the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical. By the late-‘80s, Little Shop of Horrors had become the highest grossing musical in off-Broadway history. The show later received a Broadway run.

In 1986, Frank Oz directed a film adaptation starring Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, and Steve Martin that would soon become one of the most beloved and successful film adaptations of a Broadway musical in American history.

Since the ‘80’s, Little Shop of Horrors has grown to become one of the most popular musicals in the world. The show has received many tours and revivals, not to mention thousands of amateur and professional productions the world over.

This summer, Harlequin Productions presents this classic musical masterpiece from June 23-July 24. From a movie made on a bet to one of the most popular shows in the history of Broadway, Little Shop of Horrors is a timeless sci-fi soul musical that will soon leave its mark right here in Olympia.

Visit harlequinproductions.org for more information and to purchase tickets.

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