Ever since its opening at the WPA, Menken and Ashman’s Little Shop of Horrors has been a smash hit the world over. It’s played in over 40 countries, been watched by hundreds of millions of people, been revived twice between Off-Broadway and Broadway proper, been adapted to a critically acclaimed movie that itself has achieved a bit of a cult status, is currently being eyed for a second movie adaptation, and is one of the most produced shows in educational and amateur theatre. None of this is any small feat; Little Shop is an offbeat show. It’s not always easy to make sci-fi work in a theatrical setting, let alone sci-fi that’s also a comedy-horror with a substantial body count and a series of increasingly large puppets as the centerpiece. Even if you can make that work in New York, translating that success outward is just as difficult, if not moreso. And yet, Little Shop continues to find worldwide appeal despite what a niche show it appears to be on the surface. This begs the question: why? What is it about Menken and Ashman’s weird little show that affords it such mass appeal? And can we perhaps learn anything from what it is that draws so many people to Little Shop?

Little Shop of Horrors is one of those shows that I think is ingenious in its simplicity. It has a pretty basic story on the surface, not bogging us down with too many details on Audrey II’s extraterrestrial nature and instead focusing on the love story between Seymour & Audrey and the shared hardships of the denizens of Skid Row. The sci-fi elements act as a backdrop to comment on the characters and the world rather than being hamfistedly stipulated on, making the story a lot more human and relatable than a musical whose icon is an alien plant would lead you to believe. This relatability I believe is key to Little Shop’s multi-national, multi-decade success. Mixing a strong human element with well-made genre fiction makes a story not only aesthetically pleasing but emotionally accessible, ensuring that after the audience gets captured by stylized visuals, they stay engaged because they relate to the characters. Seymour and Audrey are likable protagonists in very real predicaments, as we see issues such as economic hardship and abusive relationships continuing to plague our world day in and day out. Even as Seymour begins to commit murders and become consumed by his greed and hubris, you feel for him because the story has the space to make it very clear that, deep down, he’s doing all of this so he can live a better, more stable life. For a show that gets as silly as Little Shop, it knows how to display sincerity in a very real way that audiences can engage with. Wrote Howard Ashman in a 1985 acting copy of the script:







“The script keeps its tongue firmly in cheek, so the actors should not. Instead, they should play with simplicity, honesty, and sweetness--even when events are at their most outlandish… Having directed the original New York production of Little Shop myself, and subsequently having seen it in many versions and even many languages, I can vouch for the fact that when Little Shop is at its most honest, it is also at its funniest and most enjoyable.” So if the appeal of the show lies in how human its story is and how likable its characters are, how does it get away with killing its leads? For the uninitiated: Little Shop of Horrors ends with all four of our main human characters dead at the hands (vines?) of Audrey II before a commercial horticulturist comes in to take samples of the famous plant, unfazed by the absence of its equally famous owner. We’re told by our narrators that Audrey II replicas were mass-produced, sold all over America, and fed blood and bodies just like the original, leading them to taking over the world and eating everything in their paths. We’ve seen plenty of instances where endings like this don’t work. Audiences can sometimes feel like it’s a slap in the face to watch unhappy endings come to characters they like. The cinematic adaptation of this very musical infamously changed the ending after test screenings saw audiences greatly upset by the original ending. It’s never seemed to have that issue in live venues before, however, and even now there seems to be a preference among fans of the movie for its original ending (which was officially restored in a Blu-Ray release a few years ago to the delight of myself and many others). Frank Oz, who directed the movie adaptation, theorized after the bad ending tested poorly onscreen that the ending works onstage because the curtain call is there to remind everyone that none of it is real and none of these people are, in fact, actually dead, whereas a movie doesn’t provide the same comfort. I’m not sure how much I subscribe to this theory, seeing as recordings of the original Off-Broadway production show audiences roaring with appreciation before the house lights came back up for the call. It’s hard to say what led those test screening audiences to respond poorly to the original ending, but I think I do have an inkling as to what makes theatrical audiences around the globe leap to their feet for the monstrous fly trap who takes over the world. You see, Little Shop of Horrors doesn’t just end by saying “the plant ate everyone and that’s sad, the end.” It leaves the audience with a prescient warning: don’t feed the plants.







While Little Shop of Horrors generally follows the same story of the original movie, there are many changes that set the two apart from one another. Several characters from the movie don’t exist in the musical, the sadistic dentist side character Dr. Farb becomes a key player in the form of the highly unstable Orvin Scrivello, DDS., and the cinematic ending where both Mushnik and Audrey survive becomes the ending we know today where nobody is spared from the wrath of Audrey II, not even the audience watching the show. The latter is what’s important to our discussion here. In the movie, the plant eats Seymour and subsequently wilts, leaving his friends and family to mourn the fallen florist. In the musical, Seymour murders Orin & Mushnik and Audrey II fatally wounds its namesake. Seymour feeds Audrey to the plant (per her dying wish) before, realizing what his hubris has done, jumps into its mouth with a machete to try to kill it from inside and is subsequently eaten. The major difference is Seymour. In the original movie, Seymour is an unwitting, hypnotized pawn who feeds accidentally killed people to his plant who dies anyway. In the musical, Seymour is an active murderer, accidentally aiding and abetting Audrey II in taking over the world for the false promise of glory and the love of Audrey. Our sympathetic hero becomes a tragic figure, and we sit on the edge of our seats praying that he’ll realize his mistake before it’s too late. We’ve come to identify him; we all know what it’s like to desire fame, fortune, and the love of that special person in your life. When the musical starts you want to see him get all of that, but by the time he’s having that final showdown with Audrey II you just want him to live to see another day. But he doesn’t, and the audience is left to ponder what it all means. The cast reassembles to answer that question: Seymour fell for the oldest trick in the book. “They may offer you fortune and fame, love and money and instant acclaim, but whatever they offer you, don’t feed the plants!” With this simple change to our protagonist’s story, this silly little sci-fi show becomes a powerful fable about the perils of falling for the tricks of those who care only for themselves. The way Little Shop ends is depressing, no doubt, but the musical gives us a glimmer of hope in its final warning. It tells us that “if we fight it, we’ve still got a chance,” and suddenly the song is no longer really about giant alien plants that want to take over the world, and instead is about the audience. The feeling of distress that the audience comes to share with Seymour is galvanized by this ending. It says to the audience that situations like Seymour’s are actually happening in the real world, but now you have the wisdom to actually do something about it. This empowers the audience in a way which I believe is the key to why the ending of the show works as well as it does. With this finale, Little Shop seems keenly aware that there are powerful people in this world who would seek to take advantage of you, especially if you live in any sort of socioeconomic distress.







Ronald Reagan was sworn into the Presidency of the United States on January 20th, 1981. Now seen as the idol of American political conservatism, his presidency was known for its hardline towing of the right-wing party line. In the interest of avoiding a conundrum in the comments I will refrain from commenting on my own feelings about the Reagan administration, but I believe that it’s safe to say that nearly all of Reagan’s policies were controversial and still remain points of contention between the conservatives who uphold his legacy as a gold standard for American politics & the leftists who are highly critical of it. One such policy was what is now referred to as Reaganomics, which advocated for economic growth by primarily promoting breaks for the supply side of the economy. In 1981, Reagan passed the Economic Recovery Tax Act which lowered the lowest tax bracket’s rates by 3% immediately and cut the highest marginal tax bracket by 20% over a 3 year period. Enacted to encourage greater investment in new ventures and jobs, his plan of “trickle-down” economics is highly debated to this day, with its advocates believing it to be an effective way to stimulate the economy and its critics believing that the increased savings for the upper class don’t trickle down nearly as effectively as the idea promises. There’s not much I can find online about Howard Ashman’s political leaning, but my guess is that he was critical of Reagan’s administration and policies, especially as a gay man in an era where the government was turning its back on the HIV/AIDS epidemic (of which Ashman himself died in 1991). Assuming this, we can see a certain prevalence in what the show has to say. Through this lens, “though there’s slop in the trough for you, please whatever they offer you don’t feed the plants” is a call to action to fight the tempting temporary benefits that are offered if you act complicit in the promotion of socioeconomic disparity. The show being written during the very public release of the Economic Recovery Tax Act, it’s entirely possible that Menken and Ashman intended to include at least some commentary on nascent Reaganomics. The act provided a short-term, small benefit to the most economically destitute but ultimately came down in favor of the economic interests of the upper class, and it’s not hard to see how the story of Seymour and Audrey II could be interpreted as a metaphor for that kind of policymaking. If this is the reading you take with it, then the musical is very directly asking you not to enable those who would promote such things or fall for what they seem to promise; they are the proverbial Audrey II’s and their ideas the tantalizing offers to Seymour. Even if you don’t consciously recognize this connection or even just disagree with this reading, there is something undeniably powerful about a piece of art that looks directly at the struggling members of its audience and tells them “we know how hard it all is; be wary of those who would take advantage of your situation.” The blow of such a sad ending is cushioned by Little Shop turning a sympathetic eye toward the audience and imparting them with wisdom meant to make the world a better place, which I think is what ultimately has catapulted the show to all the success its found for the past 37 years.







The unique thing about Little Shop of Horrors is not only how massively successful it is, but also how influential it seems to be. The image of Audrey II’s giant venus fly trap form is widely recognizable even if you’ve never seen any of Little Shop’s many iterations, aspects of Little Shop get constantly referenced in pop culture, and, perhaps most impressively, there are several works of art that can be seen as spiritual successors to the story and/or themes of Little Shop. Two of the most prominent recent examples are Be More Chill and Hadestown. Be More Chill I’ve often referred to as the Little Shop myth for a new generation. In it, a geeky high schooler gets an AI chip (the “Squip”) implanted in his head that teaches him how to be cool. The chip’s advice become more troubling as the story progresses before it begins to turn its eye to its own form of world domination. The parallels here are obvious. Replace Skid Row with high school, Seymour Krelborn with Jeremy Heere, and Audrey II with the glitchy Squip and you have this updated version of a modern classic. Though Be More Chill ends on a decidedly much happier note than Little Shop, it’s still a show that’s constructed to speak to a certain group of people struggling through life. While Little Shop warns marginalized groups against the tricks of their oppressors, Be More Chill tells young people struggling with their identity that societal expectations can often be far more dangerous than they are helpful & that the best thing that you can be is yourself. While the show’s New York runs saw mixed critical reception, it’s a massive hit amongst younger theatre fans and found a fair bit of virality with its original (pre-New-York) cast album. It appeals to its audience with relatable genre fiction in much the same way as Little Shop, it just targets a much more specific audience. Conversely, the plot of Hadestown shares effectively nothing with that of Little Shop, but instead mirrors its themes much more directly than Be More Chill. Hadestown is probably the most explicitly class-conscious musical to find success on Broadway, not merely paying lip service to the general idea of socioeconomic disparity but actively acknowledging the phenomena of working-class exploitation and the systemic issues that lead to it. Its message is complementary to that of Little Shop: it’s easy to feel hopeless when you live under the thumb of those above you, but we need to be able to acknowledge that so we can envision and build a better world. Both shows end with bad outcomes for highly sympathetic characters, but both leave their audiences with powerful glimmers of hope. Both are modern evolutions of what Little Shop of Horrors has to offer, and it’s hard to say if either of these shows would exist as they do now or be as successful as they are had Little Shop not paved the way for them nearly four decades ago. Little Shop certainly wasn’t the first of its kind; The Rocky Horror Picture Show proved in the decade prior that culty sci-fi was able to make for effective musicals, and socially conscious theatre was far from a brand new phenomenon. I believe that Little Shop’s massive success, however, helped usher in a new era of musical theatre that was able to more boldly color outside the lines. By keeping its sci-fi elements simple and attention-grabbing and swaddling its commentary in a sweet, tragic love story, Little Shop finds ways to appeal to nearly everyone who watches it. It feels like one of those stories that’s transcended its humble origins to become a bit of modern mythology, a fable off of whose back so many new stories can be built that evolve the original base tale in some way. I think Little Shop of Horrors is timeless, and will continue to delight, thrill, and empower audiences for decades to come.







If you’ve never seen Little Shop of Horrors before, I hope I’ve encouraged you to do so here; it’s a fantastic show. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how brilliantly written both its book and music are, both witty and thoughtful from start to finish and worth the price of admission alone, thematic analysis be damned. If you are already familiar with this show, I hope this little piece of mine has helped shed some new light on it. It’s always fun to find new ways to interpret art, especially pieces like Little Shop that often are taken for granted. I’m aware that this only scratches the surface of things to discuss about this wonderful show, but I think it only lends to the strength of the material that there is so much more about it to be said. Constantly funny, thoroughly entertaining, affectingly poignant, and surprisingly thoughtful, Little Shop of Horrors takes an utterly ridiculous conceit and elevates it to a level of lasting success it should not, by any means, have been able to attain. It seems rather poetic that a tale that warns you of the perils of climbing past your station in unethical ways has itself risen above expectations time and again through accessibility to those in lower societal stations. It can be tempting to sell yourself out to higher powers in exchange for security and maybe even a bit of glory, especially if you’re in dire straits. Just be wary, because you never know when that proverbial fly trap will decide to gobble you up and swallow you whole. So please, whatever they offer you, DON’T FEED THE PLANTS!!









