By Lexi Silva
Finishing out PlayMakers’ American Dream season is Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s Little Shop of Horrors, a comedic musical exploration of social corruption, class, and capitalism.
The ‘24-’25 season presented a curated variety of perspectives on identity both individual and national, and an interrogation of the validity of the defining philosophies of the American Dream. This melting pot season quilted together a variety of genres, tones and timelines that became increasingly more topical as the most recent presidential election unfolded. So how do Audrey and Seymour and Doo-Wop melodies and puppets fit into the scheme of things?
On the surface, Little Shop is fun, campy, and a little gory, but the underlying themes of greed, corruption, and nature vs. urban development provide subversive social commentary through the lens of delightful, celebratory queerness.
Director Jeffrey Meanza asserted on the first day of rehearsal that while the musical can be packaged and presented as a wonderful “bon-bon,” this production leans into honesty, grit, and the horrors that permeate life on Skid Row.
Meanza sets this Little Shop in a 1970’s facsimile of New York City where crime and civil unrest are on the rise, and everyday people are struggling to get by.
This landscape asks audiences to consider what happens when, ostensibly, the only way to beat your circumstances is to join them? Can anyone truly win when forfeiting your integrity is seemingly the only way to survive?
Characters rise to these challenges differently: Seymour gives in to Audrey II’s bloodlust to escape a hard-knock life, Mr. Mushnik capitalizes on the newfound success, Orin’s already-corrupt character carries on until he’s met with karmic retribution sooner than the rest, all while Audrey dares to dream beyond her circumstances.
Though all of humanity eventually meets a bitter end in the play, I am most inspired by how love and connection is a salve that motivates persistence despite hardship. There is a deeply affecting honesty in that.
Amid an ongoing recession and an impending trade war started on our own soil, these considerations fiercely confront America in our current moment. Meeting this heaviness with laughter and joyous musical expression is just as subversive as the poignant questions at the heart of Little Shop. From a distance, if you squint, America might seem like a shining city upon a hill. Upon closer inspection, however, some might find it more akin to a little shop of horrors–it depends on your point of view. This season at PlayMakers is a prolonged reflection on the American dream across genres and perspectives. Just because we’re approaching curtain call on the ‘24-’25 season doesn’t mean that the question of the American Dream will be leaving our minds anytime soon.
Don’t miss Little Shop of Horrors, on stage April 9 – 27, 2025, at PlayMakers Repertory Company.