Little Shop of Horrors WITHOUT the Puppets? — Page 2

Will it vocally be an issue? that role's written for a bass.

(and btw I love your ideas!! This sounds really interesting!)

Updated On: 1/30/11 at 11:20 AM

“Well, asshole”

See, gvendo2005, when you post thing like that, or asinine comments like raising Linda Hopkins from the dead, no one will take your comments seriously. I've recently worked with Linda and she's alive and well, thank you very much.

Nice to see you’ve been here for so long and you still don’t know the rules of this board.

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Updated On: 1/30/11 at 03:18 PM

IAM, exactly, the musical is written about a plant... not a 2 ton puppet. And quite frankly i'm suprised that you think "I know what's better than the writers". As a director, it's your role to mount a production which you feel tells the story the best. You take what the writers give and make it your own. Also, name one revival ANYWHERE in the world that was artistically successful when it tried to carbon copy the original. Theatre is created by taking chances, exploring new alternative. That's what I propose.

Also, about the concerns for the part vocally, the part has been performed by altos all over the country:

http://www.broadwaytheatre.com/photo_pgs/LittleShopOfHorrors.htm

Even Terri White did a production of Little Shop in Westchester.

To be fair, jagfkb did specifically say they were going to try to get permission to do that. I'm just not sure how well that number would work on stage, even though I do love it.

I just think that Little Shop is written with a very specific conceit in mind. Sure, designs of the plant vary (just look at the stunning London revival from a few years ago- imagined the plant in a different way), but it's still.. a plant. Putting all this extraneous stuff can really smother the piece, which is, at its heart, a very simple piece of theatre. I think it's great you want to pursue the B-movie stuff, since that's where the piece is rooted (no pun intended). But your alternative Audrey II just grinds against the B-movie conceit (which the plant puppet arguably originates from and fits into perfectly)... and could come across as looking even more cheap than a flaccid and inert puppet.

Little Shop is really a show that is best served by simplicity. It's not helped by any number of "concepts" thrust upon it, it's not helped by razzmatazz and spectacle, it's not helped by drenching it with irony. I'm not saying your idea is any of these things, but I'm just concerned that what you present is not true to the text.

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Good luck getting the rights to Mean Green Mother. Most of these "productions" that have added it have done so illegally. Name one major professional production that's done it. Hard to do. The only thing from the movie that's surfaced legally is the revised ending to Grow For Me and the second verse to the title song. The show's pretty much remained frozen since the early 80s (sans the rewrite to Mushnik And Son which comes with the show now).

The reason that ...Mother probably hasn't been added is probably the reason there wasn't a song there in the first place. They couldn't get the biggest plant to move fast enough to sing. In a movie, that's not an issue especially when you're filming everything under speed like they did.

But since you feel like you're a better director than Ashman himself was, or Roger Corman for that matter, do your little people plant idea. It's absolutely stupid and defies the point of the show. It's a talking plant. Not a talking person.

I wasn't buying a female plant until I saw this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XLoLVNXkZk

That video is ridiculous.

That was Boston Conservatory?!

Terrible.

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It was just announced that this is our show his year at school. The problem in our cast last year we had around 50 people and we plan on having even more this year. How can we make parts for the ensemble? The director plans on rotating the 3 girls and having like 10 girls do it so that will give us more parts but what about everyone else. Has anyone ever seen a production with a big cast?

Also I know the role of Audrey II is normally played by a male but would the humor be ruined if it was a girl (With a really deep voice)?

The difference between this and those examples is that Kiss Me, Kate and West Side Story are adaptations of previous work- obviously a totally different thing than a director thrusting a concept onto an existing script. A more apt comparison would be "a production of Sweeney Todd with virtually no set, told from the view of a mentally deranged Tobias, ambiguous staging, and all the actors playing their own instruments".

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To be honest, Boston Conservatory isn't carrying the amazing rep it once had.

As to not being able to rent the plant, when I did the show I believe it only cost us about 50.00 to acquire the materials to build our own plant, which looked pretty darn snazzy. You don't need a lot of money to do this show... that's the point.

It needs to be a fake, puppet of a plant. Because you're spoofing/celebrating a b-movie, a genre that was FULL of fake, puppet monsters.

Indeed. Further, what others have said rings true, if you plan on using MEAN GREEN MOTHER without the rights to it... here's hoping they don't shut you down or fine you.

Many many years ago I saw a truly hideous community theater production of Little Shop that had tried to build their own puppets based off of available plans. The end result was so bad I started wondering if there wasn't a way to avoid the puppet conundrum altogether and just use an actor in a costume that suggested "plant". This was well over a decade ago, but I remember that I had the physical production all worked out in my head. I have to say, my workarounds were nowhere near as grand as the ideas you have presented. I don't see how your execution would be any cheaper than renting or building the puppets.

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