In a West End groaning with the weight of American musicals Little Shop of Horrors offers too little dark relief.
Still bearing ample traces of its origins as Roger Corman's classic Fifties sci-fi movie, this off-Broadway and on-West-End musical was extravagantly praised at its Chocolate Factory revival in November.
Perhaps the comic-book hideousness of Audrey 2, that human-eating plant, which thanks to animatronics turned more than a bit human, appealed to the vulgar teenager in us. The plant does, after all, resemble a cross between gargantuan penis and giant caterpillar.
Now, in the West End, Matthew White's production strikes many witless, dull and gross notes. The songs are reckoned witty and might have been if the singers were not overwhelmed by the band.
The lead performers, apart from Paul Keating's geeky flower assistant, Seymour, engender little fun.
The voice of unseen Mike McShane, who thickly croaks and sings Audrey 2, proves the one inventive, star attraction in this morality musical about the lures of greed and sexual desire.
The action in the Alan Menken-Howard Ashman musical is mainly on Skid Row.
Designer David Farley makes the place sombre and decrepit with dustbins, down-and-outs and a threesome, doo-wop girl chorus.
Unfortunately, though, the Duke of York's aisle-seat sight-lines are abysmal. A misplaced dustbin on stage meant I could not see crucial incidents in the commercially wilting flower shop owned by Barry James's insipid Mr Mushnik.
Here, Seymour lusts in secret, chronic meekness after his very opposite number, Sheridan Smith's Audrey.
Miss Smith, breasts almost bursting out all over and quantities of upper-leg flashed thanks to a minimal skirt, ought make a far funnier impression and be far more of an air-heady, squeaky, sexy love-victim.
Typically, "I'm dating a semi-sadist" ought be a big laugh line in Rocky Horror style and wasn't. She sings touchingly, though.
Alistair McGowan, who plays Audrey's sadistic, leather-clad dentist-lover and ought to engender delirious amusement when he gets Seymour in his dental chair, turns farcical-grotesque rather than black-comedyish.
The fun is at its best when Seymour's rare plant, Audrey 2, grows big, makes the shop prosperous and demands human flesh.
Keating, flustered and flushed by Audrey's reciprocated love after the dentist's appearance, succumbs to panic and criminal deviousness.
It is not enough. This Little Shop offers too few of the right goods.
Booking to 2 June (0870 060 6623).
Little Shop Of Horrors
The Duke Of York's
St Martin's Lane, WC2N 4BG
