Little Shop of Horrors at the New Wimbledon Theatre

reviewed for The Times, 8 August 2016

It’s the show that spawned a thousand Simpsons episodes. Or at least a few good ones. The emotionally stunted Seymour (played here by an earnest Sam Lupton) works the graveyard shift in a Skid Row flower shop until a wonder-plant falls conveniently into his lap. The unique specimen makes his fortune. Only problem? It’s a Mean Green Mother From Outer Space. And it craves blood — human blood.

Alan Menken’s score keeps the doo-wop hits coming and in Tara Louis Wilkinson’s touring production they are given verve by gorgeous vocal performances from Lupton and Stephanie Clift as his best girl, Audrey. Yet for sci-fi parody to pop, it needs higher camp and hotter wit. Clift, all blonde and vulnerable, is a classic domestic abuse victim, issuing a litany of excuses for her sadistic boyfriend, Orin. Two notches more of absurdity and we would be laughing happily — if anything Wilkinson seems to have injected too much heart for us to roll with the comic punches.

With all around him playing it straight, Paul Kissaun sticks out like a sore thumb as Seymour’s Faginesque boss, the slum florist Mushnik. The lyricist of the 1986 film, Howard Ashman, had roots in Jewish theatre, as did many of those behind the franchise’s first film in 1960. In better hands our Yiddisher miser should spoof McCarthy-era stereotypes, rather than enforce them. (Mushnik’s sudden fatherly interest in the orphan Seymour is purely pecuniary.) Kissaun’s stage performance is bouncy enough, but without clearer camp signalling it’s just uncomfortable.

One person who does nail this tricky horror-comedy balance is our top-billed star, the uni-monikered Rhydian. (Once an X-Factor star, now quite the West End professional.) No wonder Audrey is scared of her boyfriend — Rhydian makes for a deliciously demonic dentist, half blond Elvis, half sexier Dr Szell. He also chews the scenery delightfully as an Aryan businessman, a cowboy capitalist and a naive botanical scientist — if only he were on stage long enough to justify the billing.

Rhydian is backed up by a captivating chorus of street girls — Sasha Latoya, Vanessa Fisher and Cassie Clare, all superb. And there’s plenty of fun in this anthropophagic arboretum. David Shields’s touring design lacks pizzazz, however — even our monster isn’t quite monstrous enough.