Before fame came fun. Prior to reviving the Disney animated musical franchise with “The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast,” composer Alan Menken and librettist Howard Ashman were working with a little lower Manhattan company called the WPA Theatre. It was there that they brainstormed something silly: A musical adaptation of “Little Shop of Horrors,” an extremely low-budget 1960 movie about a carnivorous plant that had become a cult classic via late-night TV and campus midnight movies.
Together, they created something that Ashman called “the dark side of ‘Grease,’” Menken tapping into many a circa-’60 source for inspiration, including doo-wop, rockabilly and vintage R&B. The WPA’s production became the biggest box office hit in off-Broadway history, running for five years. So what happens if you take a musical that finds charm in its cheapness and place it on the thrust stage of one of America’s most high-budget regional theaters, the Guthrie? Is that too big a venue for something so proudly “little”? Not if the artists keep the sense of fun that clearly permeated its genesis.
And the Guthrie’s summer production of “Little Shop of Horrors” does that. Under the direction of Marcia Milgrom Dodge (who also choreographs), it’s a high-energy dark comedy filled with imaginative staging ideas that still manage to look appropriately cheap. It also unleashes top talent and admirable affection upon Menken’s melodies and Ashman’s relentle.