‘Little Shop’ gets humor right, lacks heart at musical’s center

Signature Productions’ "Little Shop of Horrors" is as enjoyable as it is frustrating.

Director Erik Ball infuses the popular off-Broadway musical with effortless energy. This story about a down-and-out skid row flower shop starts drab, but never drab enough to undercut the bouncy songs. Ball understands the humor in doom-and-gloom.

Seymour (the excellent singer but sometimes robotic actor Michael Vojvodich) fantasizes not only about getting out, but of snagging his none-too-bright co-worker Audrey (Aelwyn Thomas, who somehow allows a lot of sincerity to show through her comically victimized character). But Thomas and Vojvodich don’t connect in their roles. There’s no heart at the show’s center.

That’s not a totally disastrous problem, since most theatergoers know the plant is the thing. Watching this monstrosity grow from a cute, small-pot curiosity to a dinosaur-sized atomiclike threat gives the production enormous fun. And Carnell Johnson’s don’t-even-think-of-messing-with me voice makes this unworldly threat feel very real.

There’s a singing trio that I had always assumed was the writers’ salute to the girl bands of the early ’60s. Their jive sounds feminine, so it’s a shock to see a man stuck in the middle of two women. Worse, while the three characters frequently comment on the action, the trio shows little sensitivity to the lyrics. They seem interested only in bopping to Christine Harper’s frantic choreography.

Glenn Heath expertly creates the horror of the psychotic dentist image most of us in our 50s retain from childhood. He makes us see the humor in this man’s addiction to laughing gas.

Harper’s movement allows the show several moments of extra bite, but too many bits are there not to advance the story, but to show-off. A character jumps up a streetlamp and opens an umbrella. We get the "Singin’ in the Rain" reference, but what’s funny about that? And what does it have to do with "Little Shop"?

The show keeps pulling in two directions: from clever, tongue-in-cheek amusement topped by some mountain-shaking singing to the sort of mistakes in concept that you don’t expect to see from experienced directors.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at vegastheaterchat @aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.