Arts & Life

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Refugees' son takes on man-eating plant
in Detroit revival of musical.

DAN PINE

Special to the Jewish News

M

ost actors would probably think twice
before spending a year playing straight
man to a houseplant, but for Lenny
Wolpe, it's a sweet deal.
Wolpe co-stars in a new national touring produc-
tion of the recent Broadway revival of Little Shop of
Horrors, which runs May 17-22 and May 31 June
12 at Detroit's Fisher Theatre.
Based on the nutty Roger Gorman sci-fi movie of
1960, the show was an instant smash when the
musical stage version debuted in 1982. It made stars
of Jewish composer Alan Menken and Jewish lyricist
Howard Ashman. (The two went on to write
Disney's Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast
before Ashman died of AIDS.)
In the national tour of Little Shop, Wolpe plays
Mr. Mushnik, a gruff flower shop owner whose neb-
bishy employee Seymour Krelbourn nurses Audrey
II, a man-eating houseplant always looking for her
next meal.

Dan Pine is a staff writer for J.: The Jewish News
Weekly of Northern California.

"Mushnik takes Seymour in," says the Los
Angeles-based Jewish actor about his character, "but
he's kind of rough on him."
It's hard to picture Wolpe as anything other than
the gentle soul that he is Then again, pulling off
those kinds of roles is the mark of a good actor.
Backstage West magazine described Wolpe as the
kind of actor "who can slip into myriad roles so
seamlessly that you can easily underestimate the
consummate craft that is involved."
Name a "choice character role in a famous musi-
cal," the magazine's critic wrote, and [Wolpe] has
played it — from Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof to
Eliza Doolitde's father in My Fair Lady to business-
man Horace Vandergelder in Hello, Dolly!

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Theater Rat

For all of that, Wolpe didn't show an interest in the
stage until relatively late in life. His European-born
parents fled to Russia in advance of the Nazis. Both
of his sisters were born in a displaced-persons camp
after the war, while Wolpe was born and raised in
Newburgh, N.Y.
"The Holocaust had a huge impact on my life,"

`LITTLE SHOP' TALK on page 52

5/12
2005

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