“Little Shop of Horrors.”

UGA Theatre presents “Little Shop of Horrors.” Book and Lyrics by Howard Ashman. Music by Alan Menken. Directed by Daniel Ellis. Performances will be held in the Fine Arts Theatre on April 12-13, 17-20 at 8 p.m and April 21 at 2 p.m. The April 18 and 19 performances will feature ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation. A ticketed preview performance will be held on April 11 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $18, $6 for UGA students, and can be purchased at ugatheatre.com/littleshop, by phone at 706-542-4400, or in person at the Performing Arts Center or Tate Center box office.

Audiences are undoubtedly familiar with “Little Shop of Horrors.” The Faustian tale of Seymour Krelborn originated in 1960 as “The Little Shop of Horrors,” a B-movie directed by schlock icon Roger Corman. It was later adapted into an off-Broadway stage musical in 1982 by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. This led to what is arguably considered the story’s most renowned iteration, the 1986 Frank Oz film adaptation starring Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, and Steve Martin. For stage director Daniel Ellis, breathing fresh life into such a widely recognized property was no small feat.

Ellis, however, is no stranger to reinvention of familiar material. In 2021, he and his creative team were awarded the prestigious Robert L.B. Tobin prize for their reimagining of the Gaetano Donizetti opera “The Elixir of Love,” which transposed the story from 18th century Spain to 1916 California. Examining the B-movie roots of “Little Shop,” Ellis chose to mine the various “invasion” plotlines that characterized those films, which often served as not-so-subtle allegories for the “Red Scare” of communism throughout the era. Applying this allegorical lens to “Little Shop” in the present day, Ellis set his sights on the tensions surrounding a topic at the center of America’s never-ending culture wars – drag performance.  

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