New Little Shop recording made me realize

[rattleNwoolypenguin]

Posted: 1/6/20 at 12:58am

-how incredibly underrated and great the revival with Kerry Butler and Hunter Foster recording is.


This recording is just....busy. And the 60s vibe is really sort of neutered to just be different.

[Pashacar]

Posted: 1/6/20 at 10:01am

rattleNwoolypenguin said: "-how incredibly underrated and great the revival with Kerry Butler and Hunter Foster recording is."

I would completely agree. Loved that production dearly and was sad it didn't last longer or find more acclaim. Other bright spots included Doug Sills and the cutely cartoonish sets. LSoH is a weird show where everyone seems to only want the original cast and vibe.

[George in DC]

Posted: 1/6/20 at 10:28am

The problem with the last revival of "Little Shop" , which this revival has fixed, is the show is an "Off Broadway" show. It really needs a smaller theatre to work the way it was intended. The last revival, despite great performances by Mr. Hunter and Mr. Sills, failed because the production and the theatre were too big and the quirkiness of the show got lost. I blame the producers.

[Pashacar]

Posted: 1/6/20 at 10:55am

George in DC said: "The problem with the last revival of "Little Shop" , which this revival has fixed, is the show is an "Off Broadway" show. It really needs a smaller theatre to work the way it was intended. The last revival, despite great performances by Mr. Hunter and Mr. Sills, failed because the production and the theatre were too big and the quirkiness of the show got lost. I blame the producers."

^This type of thinking is exactly what I was talking about above. The piece was made into a major motion picture, for Pete's sake. It had a hugely successful large-scale revival at Regent's Park. There's no reason it can't work on a larger scale – or that there "can't" be a better Audrey than Ellen Greene – other than nostalgia and myopia.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 1/6/20 at 11:11am

I have to agree. The show's pleasures were always tied to the concept of sci-fi bursting forth in two small spaces at the same time: a flower shop, and a tiny theater. The conceit was baked into the humble origins: a B movie turned into a small-scale show. When everything gets bigger, the fragility is exposed. No, the show didn't fall apart, and the score is perfection. But it had an almost cabaret space feel; in a B'way house, it felt pushed, trying to hard.

House size is not a small issue in how material lands (talk to people who are sitting upstairs at "The Sound Inside." So many of my friends in less perfect seats felt the show didn't project).  

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 1/6/20 at 12:28pm

Pashacar said: "and the cutely cartoonish sets."

See, that's where I felt that revival failed, turning the show into a cute cartoon. I've always found Little Shop to work best when Seymour and Audrey are playing the sincerity of the show, and I found both leads in that production to be playing broadly drawn caricatures.

[Kad]

Posted: 1/6/20 at 1:02pm

I find the cast album of the Broadway revival to mediocre at best, even with Foster's good Seymour leading it. Butler, in particular, is nearly unlistenable for me- a grating, affected vocal performance that seems all artifice. The album is still valuable for being a very complete recording of the show (which shockingly hadn't existed until that point) and for the demos that were included. 

Everything about it, from the orchestrations to the performances, seem to be playing it BIG. 

[haterobics]

Posted: 1/6/20 at 1:02pm

Pashacar said: "There's no reason... that there "can't" be a better Audrey than Ellen Greene – other than nostalgia and myopia."

I'm willing to entertain that notion, but I've never experienced it yet.

[ModernMillie3]

Posted: 1/6/20 at 1:50pm

Everyone and everything sounds great on the new recording with the exception of Tammy Blanchard, whose accent and vocals are unlistenable, imo. 

[superiska123]

Posted: 1/6/20 at 2:32pm

I like the orchestrations and vocal improvisations some of the cast members do, but I have lots of issues with the way the album sounds... Some tracks use autotune so much they sound robotic (esp. noticeable on Tammy Blanchard's songs) and overall everything sounds way too polished for a LSOH cast recording. I have no doubt this is a great production to see on stage though.

[Bettyboy72]

Posted: 1/6/20 at 3:10pm

I also thought Butler was miscast. She's a brilliant comedienne but I don't think of Audrey as a big comedic part. Audrey has a lot of gravity that Butler completely missed. Alice Ripley was let go from the production, but I truly feel she has more of what Blanchard has, which is depth and an understanding of pathos. 

When I think of good Audrey's I think of character actresses, not ingenues. I think Martha Plimpton would have been great as well. 

[rattleNwoolypenguin]

Posted: 1/6/20 at 3:33pm

I HATE that Mushnik and Son sounds like Tango instead of Klezmer.

The whole joke of the song is it’s a Fiddler like parody.