21-SEP-19 Don't Feed the Plants Day

[DiveMilw]

I was reminded on another website that today is the 21st day of the month of September and we should NOT feed our plants on this day.

[scenicdesign71]

I have tickets -- for the twenty-third day of the month of October, to be exact -- to the new Off-B'way Little Shop revival, which I'm kinda super-excited for.

I never saw the 2003 Broadway production with Hunter Foster and Kerry Butler, but the pictures and clips I've seen since never thrilled me, and I had long since decided the show works better in a funkier, more intimate setting.  (Unfortunately, among their other flaws, neither of the two productions I've designed would qualify as such: though their budgets were both modest to a fault, both spaces were just too large).

And, for all its strengths -- its upbeat ending decidedly NOT being one of them, but at least now we have the original cut -- I'm not sure Frank Oz's (admittedly delightful, on its own iffy terms) big-budget movie version actually did the material any favors by taming it into a family-friendly (not to say sugary) blockbuster, its satirical edges sanded down into fuzzy nostalgia.  (The restored ending does help quite a bit, but it's still hard to imagine anything farther from the story's original B-movie roots).

So I'm hoping the new revival, with (or despite?) its A-list cast and director, will be able to restore a little edge to a show that has for some time now tended to get drowned in quaintness.  Step One would be for Groffsauce to play against his own charisma and good (suuuch good) looks, as fiercely as possible, and restore Seymour to the feckless schmuck he's meant to be.  I'm rooting for Tammy Blanchard to (somehow) obviate all memories of Ellen Greene for two hours.  And I can't imagine better casting for Orin than Christian Borle.