Last seen in London in 2007, Howard Ashman and Alan Menken's
Little Shop of Horrors is the Open Air Theatre's main musical offering of this summer, and if it hadn't already been a must-see for me the fact that Maria Aberg is directing definitely would have tipped the scale. And although everything that's fun about the show remains, there's certain directorial touches - and one casting choice in particular - that really make the production feel like it's been looked at with fresh eyes. The 1982 musical is based on a 1960 Roger Corman B-movie, a fact nodded at by Tom Scutt's design making the stage a drive-in cinema; but as the story's set on Skid Row and everything's run down, this drive-in is long-since closed and derelict, everything is grey and lifeless, and the scenery is wheeled on and off stage in shopping trolleys.
