I CANT SLEEP...- Page 2

[Marquise]

Posted: 8/23/04 at 1:41am

i was fortunate enuff to see LSOH here at the MIRACLE theatre in Miami when Alice Ripley was still playing Audrey. She was great..wtf happened that she didnt make it to b'way?

[Matt_G]

Posted: 8/23/04 at 1:41am

It had it's tryouts in Florida with Alice Ripley and Sutton Foster.

[POLisPOL]

Posted: 8/23/04 at 1:42am

I hope that someday the alternate ending of the movie will be released in color.
meanwhile I cannot stop watching the black and white version on the dvd!

[Bway37]

Posted: 8/23/04 at 1:42am

I think the Virginia Theater was great for little shop.
But i still think that a Little Shop revival could do much better off-broadway...

[nystateomind04]

Posted: 8/23/04 at 2:04am

damn i thought this was going to be a thread about insomnia.

then i could relate...

[BWayBoy88]

Posted: 8/23/04 at 4:41pm

Why was Alice Ripley fired? She would be the perfect Audrey

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 8/23/04 at 4:54pm

This is a bit behind the current conversation, but:

"I live in New York City.. i don't think it's coming to a place near me soon."

Since the show isn't currently running in New York, isn't there a good chance the tour will go to New Jersey? See it there.

[uncageg]

Posted: 8/23/04 at 5:05pm

It may go to Philly....that's not far.

[Link Larkin Wanabe]

Posted: 8/23/04 at 5:31pm

Matt,

Did you say there was a version where Sutton Foster was Audrey? Please tell me Hunter wasn't involved at that point. There is already enough incest talk over at the Grease thread.

Akiva

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 8/23/04 at 5:43pm

Ripley and the production got bad reviews in Florida, so the producers fired her and the director and most of the cast other than Hunter -- Hunter was the only member of that cast to make it to Broadway.

Jerry Zaks came in and hastily put together a new production, so that they could keep the Virginia and bring the show in last season.

I love the show, but this production of it was a misfire IMO. I saw the original off-Broadway and in addition to the intimacy, Ellen Greene, Lee Wilkoff and the rest of the cast understood how to play the style of the show, which Zaks and his cast didn't. In addition to being too broad comedically (an effort, I suppose to "fill the space"), too often the actors were cartoonish and over-the-top, which served to undercut the show's humor. With this kind of show, less is more and nothing kills the laughs like "winking" and "indicating" the jokes to the audience -- it works for the first ten minutes, but then the jokes start falling flat becuase you're overplaying them. The cast was working way too hard to "sell" the jokes, when actually the show is much funnier when it's played realistically with a touch of earnestness. The book is constructed well-enough that if the actors focus on playing each scene naturalistically and with energy, the laughs come automatically from the sheer absurdity and outrageousness of the situations -- the more real it's played, the funnier it ends up being to the audience.

That was what was so amazing about Ellen Greene's performance -- she never played anything for laughs, yet everything she said and did was hysterically funny. She trusted the material and played it straight with such a heartbreaking earnestness and vulnerability, she made audiences laugh and cry at the same time. Kerry Butler might have been capable of that, but she was misdirected and her Audrey wasn't half as effective as it could have been.

Zaks has proven himself a very capable director of comedy over the years, but I don't think he had enough time in this instance to figure out how best to stage this show (and probably wasted too much time getting the damn giant plant to work at the end). At it's best, LSOH is both funnier and more emotionally affecting than this last Broadway production -- perhaps if Zaks had had a few more weeks of rehearsal he'd have realized his mistakes.

Updated On: 8/23/04 at 05:43 PM

[Link Larkin Wanabe]

Posted: 8/23/04 at 9:02pm

Hah...well nothing can compare to the absurd version done by Theatre Clagary a few years back. They turned Little SHop in a statement on Vietnam (well after the fact). I dont remember much but i remember at one point the Urchins had hippie protest signs and that at the end the plant turned into a vietnam helicoptor and Audrey, Mushnik and Seymour jumped out...it was bizzare and nobody in the audience (my young self included) seemed to get it.

Akiva

[broadwaybaby654]

Posted: 8/23/04 at 9:11pm

Well if you can't sleep, take a sominex!

[Tiny-Toon]

Posted: 8/23/04 at 9:19pm

:)

[nystateomind04]

Posted: 8/23/04 at 9:42pm

margochanning is right (of course). i did little shop at school this year and there is a note to the actors in the script that explains how the show should be played; not for laughes, not for camp, but naturally- as margo said.

[spiderdj82]

Posted: 8/23/04 at 9:49pm

I saw it at Footlight (Charleston, SC) and it was HILLARIOUS without being campy. It was played like real life people and it was SO GOOD!!!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 8/23/04 at 10:52pm

I didn't realize that there was a note in the script (I've never directed this show or read the script), but good for the authors! I can remember amateur productions of the show that were funnier and worked better than this Zaks production and I now understand why.

I spent years in downtown theatre and one of the cardinal rules was always -- don't play the laugh, play the reality of the scene. This is true of "Little Shop," of Ludlam, of Durang, of Busch, of Kondoleon -- you destroy the comedy of the piece whenever the director and actors behave as if they know the show that they're in is a comedy. It's especially death if the show relies on "camp" humor -- if you play it like a Carol Burnett Show sketch and acknowledge the "camp," you're going to be in for a very, VERY long night (with no laughs -- Burnett sketches were 5-10 minutes long .... anything longer than that for that kind of overplayed, parodic humor and you're torturing your audience -- and yourselves). You have to trust the scenario to deliver the laughs -- as an actor, if you play it with absolute truth and honesty (as if you're doing O'Neill or Chekhov or Ibsen), the comedy will shine through.

Zaks didn't get it (and he should have with his background), and that's what sank this LSOH production.

[badkarma719]

Posted: 8/24/04 at 2:26am

Just to put my 2 cents worth in,

1>I did LSOH in high school and thought that in the cast recording you could tell the campiness, all the dentists' charaters reminded me of Nathan Lane or Mathew Broderick

2>Opens LSOH script from MTI
turns to page 7

AUTHER'S NOTE

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS satirizes many things: science fiction, "B" movies, musical comedy itself, and even the Faust legend. There will, therefore, be a temptation to play it for camp and low-comedy. This is a GREAT AND PAOTENTIALLY FATaL MISTAKE. The script keeps its tounge firmly in cheep, so the actors should not. Instead, they should play with simplicity, honesty, and sweetness- even when events are at thir most outlandish. The show's individual "style" will evolve naturally from the words themselves and an approach to acting and singing them that is almost child-like in its sincerity and intensity. By way of example, AUDREY poses like Fay Wray from time to time. But she does this because she's in genuine fear nad happens to see the world as her private "B" movie- but because she's "commenting" to the audience on the silliness of her situation. Having directed the original New York production of LITTLE SHOP myself, and subsequenty having seen it in many cersions nad even many lanuages, I can vouch for the fact that when LITTLE SHOP is at its most honest, it is also at its funniest and most enjoyable.

Howard Ashman


and if the writer and director says to play it real isnt that what should be done. However it WAS Broadway, who thinks that just cause they are allowed to do a show this means that they can change it to what they like(take Gease for example, they redid songs just for them that are not in the show anymore). LSOH also did this with songs and acting.

[UDJAT]

Posted: 8/24/04 at 11:11am

I don't get why people didn't like this production of lsoh. This was the only live production I've seen of it and I truly enjoyed it. I loved everyone's performance. I just wish I didn't see it the closing day, I would have loved to have seen it another time.

I guess I will be checking it out on tour.