Little Shop of Horrors – Review – Sheffield Crucible Theatre

By Clare Jenkins, December 2024

Sheffield Crucible’s Christmas offering, in the form of the camp Little Shop of Horrors, comes with a series of trigger warnings. They include: ‘References to drug abuse, some strong language including verbal slurs, physical violence (visually represented), dental medical imagery, death (visually represented), animal cruelty (ditto), sexism and misogyny…’

So, if you faint at the sight of a dead toy dog or a lifeless guppy fish, come over all funny when someone says, ‘No sh*t, Sherlock’, or wince at an arm encased in a plaster cast, maybe go watch Peppa Pig instead.

However, the theatre can supply ‘ear defenders’ if you’re sensitive to loud noises. And you’re excused if you can’t stand the thought of a dentist’s chair. With Wilf Scolding as the smooth, upper-crust sadist in charge of the rusty dental drill, you’d have to be a total masochist not to run a mile.

“Blood-thirsty”

But the list of warnings does beg the question: what bit of ‘acting’ are today’s theatre audiences not expected to understand? You don’t go to King Lear expecting Father Christmas. If you do, you’re inhabiting a parallel universe.

Which is exactly what this killer rock musical offers. A universe of solar eclipses and blood-thirsty plants. Starting out in the 1960s as a B-movie, it was turned into a hit Broadway musical before morphing into a film again in 1986. It’s now back as a stage show, directed here by Amy Hodge (who also directed the joyous Fantastically Great Women two years ago). And if the first night is anything to go by, it still very much has its cult following.

It tells the story of a failing florist’s shop in Skid Row, Anywheresville, USA. A place of both human and plastic detritus, with nail bars, dustbins and rubbish sacks aplenty. It’s ‘Downtown’, as the cast sing – but not in a Petula Clark way.

“Electric with energy”

Shop assistant Seymour (Colin Ryan, making a perfect goofy geek) reckons he has just the exotic plant to attract customers. Naming it Audrey II in homage to the co-worker he’s in love with (a soulfully vulnerable Georgina Onuorah), he discovers too late that his Frankenstein’s monster needs human blood to thrive. From then on, it’s a challenge to find enough bodies to keep its voracious appetite satisfied – and the shop thriving.

First to go is Orin, the human Audrey’s abusive, e-bike-riding, black leather jacket-clad boyfriend – who’s also the dentist. The scene where he pins a patient to the chair, singing ‘Be a Dentist’, while actors dressed up as lighted molars prance around is a classic of satire. Seymour’s unpleasant boss, Mr Mushnik (Michael Matus) is next. But how, once the Kermit-green monster plant has grown big and strong enough to develop a sort-of-human form (Sam Buttery, excellent in emerald lamé and matching talons), is Seymour to keep it sated?

To call the show surreal is like calling Hamlet a bit sad. Often over-amplified, sometimes shrill, electric with energy, with a live ten-strong band and belted-out songs, it’s a glitzy mash-up of physical comedy, dance genres, technical wizardry, and exaggerated everything.

“Heart and soul”

Wilf Scolding is mesmerising in all his roles: the dentist, the editor of Life magazine, the TV talkshow host, and the corporate advertising man in satanic red outfit with pitchfork. The whole cast put their heart and soul (if not, thankfully, their flesh) into it.

But ultimately, this Comedy of Horrors feels like ‘fabulous nonsense’ as my companion described it. As a bums-on-seats Christmas show, it’s doubtless a triumph. But maybe next time, the Crucible – instead of trying to emulate the Lyceum’s commercial success (Snow White on speed this week, Rocky Horror a couple of weeks ago) – could stage something a bit more questioning, thought-provoking and demanding? Titus Andronicus, perhaps?

‘The Little Shop of Horrors’ is at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre until 18th January
images: Manuel Harlan