Seymour is a down-on-his-luck florist with a crush on his co-worker Audrey. When he discovers a mysterious – and voracious – plant, suddenly Seymour and Audrey are thrust into an epic battle that will determine the fate of the entire human race. Little Shop of Horrors made its highly-anticipated return home to Off-Broadway, in an intimate new production directed by Michael Mayer that offers an unprecedented opportunity to get close — maybe too close — to an incredible plant with an insatiable appetite.
What may seem like miscasting with the hunky Groff as the meekly innocuous Seymour was a stroke of genius. He's both endearing and dreamy, which adds a deeper dimension to his romantic pairing with Tammy Blanchard's Audrey. And if she seemed to struggle with some of the high notes, it only added to her vulnerable take on the role of the good-hearted masochist. Channeling Judy Holliday, her soulful pining for a decent home somewhere that's green was wrenching. And then there's Christian Borle, hilariously inspired as the nasty nitrous oxide snorting Oren Scrivello DDS. But that's far from all. Playing multiple roles, he distinguished each one with such particular virtuosity that he steals practically every scene he's in. It's a master class in comedy performance and if you see it just for him, you got your money's worth. The cozy venue upstairs at the Westside Theatre is perfectly suited to this hugely entertaining little show. I expect it to be planted there for many months, if not years, to come.
Tonally, Mayer's production, accented with Will Van Dyke's fine arrangements and Ellenore Scott's gestural, loose-hipped, giddy choreography, takes a chirpy see-what-sticks approach, but the script is daffy and capacious enough to allow performances as emotionally grounded as Blanchard's, as blithely comic as Groff's, as bananas as Borle's, who plays Scrivello with the precision of a Swiss wristwatch and the derangement of a candidate for exorcism. He mugs, he twerks, he chews scenery like it's a wooden amuse-bouche. If scene-stealing is a crime, someone should make a citizen's arrest at the stage door.
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