Little Shop of Horrors

Now playing at Town Hall, *Little Shop of Horrors* is a horror-comedy rock musical by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, set around a struggling flower shop and a strange new plant with an appetite for blood. Its score draws on early-1960s pop forms, including doo-wop and early Motown, using bright harmonies to frame darker material. The show has a long New York history, beginning with its Off-Off-Broadway debut in 1982 and later returning in major revivals, a reminder of the city’s role in keeping cult musicals alive. One sharp detail is how it treats ambition as a kind of slow contagion.