Horrors Sets Up West End Shop Post-Menier??? Date: 12 December 2006
With good notices and strong ticket sales (See Review Round-up, 5 Dec 2006), chances are strong that the Menier Chocolate Factory’s new revival of the gleefully gruesome 1982 musical comedy Little Shop of Horrors will follow its earlier reinvention of Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George into the West End in the new year. The Menier has certainly invested in the production – spending some £100,000 (an incredible sum for a 150-seat fringe theatre) on the carnivorous Audrey II plant – with a transfer in mind. While most revivals of Little Shop of Horrors have retained the same design for Audrey II, as per the film version (pictured), at the Menier a brand new plant has been designed by David Farley, who won (along with animator Timothy Bird) this year’s Critics’ Circle and Evening Standard awards for his work on Sunday in the Park with George. The Menken musical is directed by Matthew White and stars Sheridan Smith, Paul Keating, Barry James, Mike McShane and Jasper Britton. It continues at the Menier until 25 February 2007. As with Sunday in the Park with George, which transferred to the 750-seat Wyndham’s, the right-sized West End venue is key. The original 1983 West End production of Little Shop of Horrors played at the 800-seat Comedy Theatre, which would be ideal except that it’s been nabbed from February by Matthew Warchus’ revival of Sixties sex farce Boeing-Boeing, starring Roger Allam, Mark Rylance and Frances De La Tour (See News, 8 Dec 2006).
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