Video: Darren Criss is Suddenly Back on Stage in LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World

Darren Chris and Evan Rachel Wood have stepped into the iconic roles of Seymour and Audrey

in the smash hit revival of Little Shop of Horrors, and I caught up with Darren here at the West Side Theater

I am thrilled to be sitting with you, my friend. I'm thrilled to be with you, man

This is great. Welcome back. How does it feel? It feels great. You know, this is my off-Broadway debut

Yeah? Yeah. So it's fun. I mean, it's Little Shop. We were just talking before we started rolling about

about the other shows that have gone into. How to Succeed, Headwig. These are musicals at least

We're not going to talk about American Buffalo and this. But if we put American Buffalo in there

all four of those are beloved shows that have the fan bases that you don't have to figure out

if it works or not. We're not sitting here going, oh man, I don't know if people are going to

like this show with this doo-op music and this man-eating plant. Like, this is, we're good

Tried and true. Yeah, so I've definitely hedged my bets as far as what I've been involved in because I'm doing stuff that I and audiences already love

So I'm, you know, there's a head start on being here. You don't have to scratch your head and think, like, it's great

And it was great before I got here, and it'll be great after I leave. So to just be a part of the already well-oiled machine of something as great as a little shop

It's just like it's the best train to hop on, you know? Okay, I was welcome to all the Seymours and they said they're like, last thing they do is get fitted for the glasses

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So remember your fitting day for your glasses? I am. So I wear glasses normally

So I'm used to that. What's weird, and this is a little behind the scenes trivia here

His mic is in there. And so anytime I'm sweating my ass off, I want to take off my glasses

but then I'm like detaching this entire apparatus. So, yeah, I don't know if that means other than that's some fun backstage stuff

And it's also getting foggy because, you know, Seymour runs around quite a bit. But yeah, it's wild that there's like a uniform

I'm Seymour number nine. Are you really? Yeah, and I know every single Seymour before me

at least on this production, are friends of mine. So I was like, I'm starting to feel left out

So I had to get in here and put on the glasses. Okay, first night on stage, here you are

looking out here, doing Seymour. What was it like? You know, man, it's, you know, first night's you just seeing your family and friends

And these are people that also know Little Shop and know that I love Little Shop

So it's special to get to share that with them. I mean, look, we, we love

I love this show and so getting to just you know tip your hat to it I can go off for hours and hours and hours about Howard Ashman I want you to Howard is like my personal Jesus

He's been somebody, anytime my whole life people ask me, who could you, if you get at dinner with anybody dead or alive

I'd always say, Howard Ashman, no question. On a creative level, on just everything that he's done

he's just like my North Star and everything that I do. The songwriter's an actor, is everything

I just, I never met him and I don't know him personally in any way other than

and he's left this body of work that I kind of use as this North Star

with how I would do things. I mean, I pretend that he's in the audience every night

just so I can, in my mind, go, God, would Howard approve this

And there are things I'll do where I go, Howard wouldn't have liked that. I don't know this for a fact, but I feel

I felt connected to this guy my whole life because of the way this show contributed to what would be a huge benchmark

for my creative understanding of musicals, which was the Disney Renaissance, which he is

This show is proto Disney Renaissance. Katzenberg saw this and said, Help Us Out with Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin

rest is history. So, I mean, there are things in the show that you hear somewhere that's green

You go, oh, part of your world. You hear Mlushnik and Son, poor unfortunate sort. You hear all these songs that are versions

of what would become these standards in at least millennials' understanding of me

Actually, I shouldn't even delegate it just to millennials, but several generations worth of experiencing musical storytelling

were those films. So doing this for any audience, I'm always, you know

thinking of what Howard would think if he was in the audience. That's every performance

that's in my head because he's just such a hero of mine. I could cry

Like he's, he would have been 74 this year. Yeah. You know. So I went to see that at the WPA first

Oh, wow. I sat next to Cher. Wow. So that was the coolest thing before I moved to the Orphium

and everything else. That's right. It wasn't DWA. I keep saying it was at the Orphium, but it started W.A

That little teeny tiny theater. Yeah. That, if I could go back in time

Me too. God damn it, that would be cool. What a special thing

What was it like for you seeing the show without, like... Had no preconception

What if you heard, this was this great new musical based. Off Broadway, downtown. Off Broadway, yeah

Wow. I was just saying as a comparison, because if it's 87, 86 or something like that

Phantom would have opened. Yeah. So just to compare, like, uptown, multimillion dollar musical

huge orchestra, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge. And then if you were a theater goer, you would have seen that

And then you were seeing Little Shop trying to tell people, you've got to see this thing downtown. Like trying to explain this show before it was famous Yeah It would be a weird sell Like it a Roger Corman movie from the 50s but there duo music but there like a plant pup I can really You going to have to come see it

Now that it's famous, it's easy. But at that point, I can't imagine trying to tell somebody come see this weird thing downtown

Oh, that's sitting next to Cher too. Yeah, totally. That's cool. That's how it's done. Wow

Yeah. Okay. Singing this iconic score. Like, tell me about that first night

Like, the audience is here, and then you get to do it. Was the show like three hours long

No. No, I mean, listen, Howard Ashman did a really good job of economy in this show

There's not a lick of fat on this libretto. It moves. It is specific

It is concise. It is smart. And it doesn't feel fast. It's very, it's just economic

And so it moves fast. But I will say these songs are so famous that, especially for musical theater people

that it's fun to do them in context to the story. Suddenly Seymour, God knows you and I have probably sang that around a

piano hundreds of times in our life, and you're just kind of wailing these fun lyrics and

these fun notes. But when you drop it in the context of storytelling, it has a very different meaning

And it's really fun doing that and acting the story because, and everybody hears what

me say this a thousand times today. I'll say it brand new for you. But I thoroughly believe that

pathos is a dish best served fun, you know? So when you have these desperate characters coming from a

desperate place, really looking for each other. And yes, there's a plant and there's poetry and there's a duop

But, you know, we're on Skid Row. You have these two broken people singing about how much they are trying to support each other

or one person who's letting herself be vulnerable to somebody supporting her for the first time in her life

That's some heavy shit, man. And that's a beautiful thing to perform in a song as familiar as suddenly Seymour

But when you're watching the show, you're in the second act. You've been following these people, this whole show

Suddenly it hits a little differently than it would at a piano bar

Yeah, totally. And that goes for a lot of the songs, you know, somewhere that's green, and even some of the more fun charm numbers

there's a real pathos to these songs that live a much larger life than just being catchy

Howard was very good about putting a lot of heart and a lot of soul

into these very witty musical moments, but it wasn't without a significant degree of dramaturgy

Incredible lyricist. And then Alan Menkin, go him into the mix. Two bit, some two bit Johnny

Alan Mankin, no one's heard of. Damn. Yeah. Is that amazing? Yeah man I mean Alan been I mean I giving all the credit to Howard simply by aware of this being you know he sort of architected this WPA and everything But Alan you know I don even know what to say I mean it the perfect sort of lightning in a bottle moment

You know, it's like I think of the Beatles, just I think of how these, these four guys just right place, right time, right background to make what they did

You have Howard's sort of surgical precision brain with drama and Alan's immense aptitude for accessible, popular music

to be used in a musical narrative that's of such a specific skill

and also his lyricism and everything I mean just the combination of those two is just like, I think God

that they met at like a BMI workshop or something like that. But yeah, I mean he's gone on

to do several great things. And Alan also, I have a great

Alan Minkin's story if you have a second. Sure. So in college I would play

Disney covers all the time at like bars and like restaurants and stuff

and those were like big tip makers because at the time, you know, I'm playing like acoustic covers of whatever, and I would sneak them in as this kind of funny, you know, people, ears would perk up because it was silly that I was doing this

They wouldn't expect to hear like an acoustic like Basanova cover of, you know, part of your world

And that would usually, you know, get me the most tips. When I was a senior at the University of Michigan, Alan's daughter, Nora was a freshman

So Alan came to the brunch that I was playing at a restaurant and he famously gave me a $100 tip in my thing

I kept that $100 tip. I quickly spent it on beer, which I don't regret

But I did get to tell him later that that's what I used it on

and eventually after we would become friends. Chase your heroes, man, that's what I always say

Chase him hard. I got to do the Hollywood Bowl concert of The Little Mermaid

And when I was playing guitar up there playing one of his songs, he was waving a $100 bill

in the wings on the right. Did you run for it? What's up

Did you run for that $100 bill? I think he's like, I'm keeping this one. I gave you one already

Yeah, exactly. Sharing the stage with Evan. Evan is a fantastic actress, a huge theater background in Raleigh and in North Carolina theater

And she's been a friend that has said yes to me far more times than I deserve. So her doing this to me is a total coup

And I think me being in it is whatever. Her doing this is Chef's Kiss

She's outstanding. And I'm lucky to have a fellow performer like her on stage who is also somebody I really just

love and love hanging out with. So it's a fan. family affair, this little shop of Horrors

This is your stage for a while. Until the next one comes along

That is the best. Good over here. Thank you. Thank you, my having to do you