Little Shop of Horrors: Not everything camp is also classic

Little Shop of Horrors is a crowd-pleaser, a musical designed to rekindle the pleasures of B movies. The Kansas City Repertory Theatre production, now on the Copaken Stage, offers pleasures enough to ensure that it’s a hit, with its phantasmagoric set and staging, amusing book, and head-bouncing — if mostly unmemorable — pop-rock songs (book and lyrics by Howard Ashman, music by Alan Menken).

B movies exert a strong pull on us, some becoming cult classics. Like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the 1975 horror-movie parody (based on a stage show), which keeps coming to mind for some reason. Both it and Little Shop of Horrors, originally a Roger Corman-directed 1960 film of the same title, take place in a similar time frame — late 1950s or early 1960s — and are sendups of horror movies, but they don’t have much more than that in common. But driving home after seeing the Rep show, I was musing over “Let’s Do the Time Warp Again,” not “Somewhere That’s Green,” one of the songs in Little Shop that stayed with me.

Maybe it’s the time-warp thing.

Little Shop of Horrors, a comedy primarily about the extremes we go to for love and self-preservation, takes place in the early days of rock and roll. Menken’s foot-tapping throwback melodies — accompanied here by a live, very competent four-piece band (music direction by Anthony T. Edwards) — are the show’s building blocks.

The Skid Row florist shop where the story is set uses a typewriter, not a computer, and takes orders on a land line. (In “Call Back in the Morning,” phones ring off the hook, but it’s closing time, so customers are asked to call back the next day. That must have been one heck of a good economy.) Lyrical references to that time include toasters, washers and dryers, and 12-inch TVs as the latest technological devices. It’s a neighborhood, back in the day, where people seem stuck for the rest of their lives in an area encompassing a few city blocks.

This Shop, though, is a contemporary multisensory experience, like watching a 24-hour TV news channel with type scrolling at the top and bottom of a split-image screen. The Rep’s colorful set is made up of tiered levels, with a balcony on each side. (Scene designer Meghan Raham has also created wonderful period clothing, including some sparkly nightclub dresses for the three-woman chorus of Eboni Fondren, Colleen Grate and Jennie Greenberry.) Directed by Kyle Hatley, the action is all-cylinders on all levels, a total eye feast, with music.

But all is not feel-good. The underlying themes of abuse and sadism are dark, not light. It’s exaggerated and camp, of course — this is a black comedy — but given current sensibilities, there’s only so much laughter to be had.

Seymour Krelborn (Joseph Medeiros) is the nerdy, clumsy, loser employee at the unprofitable and run-down florist shop, owned and run by Mr. Mushnik (Gary Neal Johnson), who has raised the orphaned Seymour since he was a boy. Mushnik still treats him as an employee, not a son — until it suits him (as sung and danced by both actors in “Mushnik and Son”). Seymour is in love with the unattainable but nice Audrey (Ashley Blanchet), the bombshell blonde who has the hots for the leather-clad, motorcycle-riding, gum-chewing dentist Orin (Nick Cordero, who also appears in some quick walk-on parts). He’s a bully, and he beats her, but she still longs to settle down in suburban, domestic bliss (in “Somewhere That’s Green”).

Seymour spends a lot of his time in the shop’s backroom, experimenting with plants. He’s been playing around with the exotic Audrey II (named for, can you guess), which hasn’t been doing well. Nothing he does helps it, until he pricks his finger on some roses. Audrey II, it turns out, feeds on human blood and thrives after this discovery, bringing fame and attention to Seymour and better business for the shop. All at a price, of course.

Puppeteer Nick Uthoff brings to life the ever-larger Audrey II (designed and engineered by Grace Hudson), which gets its booming voice from supporting actor Michael James Leslie. The other talented actor-singers in this comic-book story add dimension, humor and animation to their cartoonlike characters through strong performances — none want for talent — and story-developing tunes. The retina-stimulating lighting (by Jason Lyons) supports the musical performances and the special effects.

Little Shop of Horrors, first produced 30 years ago, has been revived in recent years. But I wonder why no one has given it a more modern spin. Even in the Rep’s visually arousing and technically assured version, the material feels more dated than retro. It’s an enjoyable couple of hours, an entertaining night out. It just doesn’t hold up as the cult classic it wants to be.