Ellen Greene can be reluctant to leave the house, so there needs to be a good reason. “Somewhere That’s Green” is an excellent one.
Greene originated the role of Audrey in the 1982 off-off-Broadway production of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s horror comedy musical “Little Shop of Horrors,” and then reprised her squeaky-voiced heroine role in director Frank Oz’s 1986 movie version.
Through February, the powerhouse singer is on a tour of live fan screenings celebrating the 40th anniversary of the film. She does Audrey’s signature ballad “Green” at every stop, though “I’m a very reticent performer,” Greene, 75, admits. “I mean, I love the work. I'm very shy about you have to take a bow and that stuff. But I like meeting everyone so much.”
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The big-screen “Little Shop,” which has a new 4K edition on Blu-ray and digital platforms, stars Rick Moranis as Seymour Krelborn, a nerdy employee at a 1960s-era Skid Row flower shop who nurtures a strange and unusual plant he found after a total eclipse of the sun. He names it Audrey II – after his crush-worthy coworker (Greene) – but the situation gets weird when he discovers that Audrey II is a man-eater who feasts on blood.
Audrey, of course, gets involved in all the chaos. She deals with emotional and physical abuse from her sadistic dentist boyfriend (Steve Martin), yet also harbors romantic feelings for Seymour. In a fantasy sequence for her “I want” showtune “Somewhere That’s Green,” Audrey sings about wanting to live one day with Seymour in an idyllic suburban home far from Skid Row: “He rakes and trims the grass/ He loves to mow and weed/ I cook like Betty Crocker/ And I look like Donna Reed.”
“Some people have to listen to a song for ages to know it. That's me. I cannot just sing a song,” Greene says. Yet when she sang “Somewhere That’s Green” for the first time, "I started to cry. It touched me, and if it touches me, I know it's going to touch you. I knew I had Audrey inside of me waiting to be born.”
At her audition, she asked to sing “Green.” “Howard was in front of me, Alan gets behind the piano, and the end of the song, all three of us were in tears and we were bonded for life,” Greene recalls.
When asked if there’s a particular lyric that speaks to her decades later, Greene responds, “The whole shebang.”
“It always makes me cry,” she says. “I know the audience is crying, but you'd think I'd get over the song touching my heart. But every time, I've had lashes fall down.
Greene feels the song is timeless in the way it speaks to an audience: “It's a hard life these days. And I want everyone to be happy, feel safe, calm in their shoes, comfortable in their shoes. Feel that they're growing and giving and not being used and used up. It's like I'm wishing for everyone. Because I can feel an audience like nobody's business.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: One 'Little Shop of Horrors' song still makes Ellen Greene cry
