Before composer Alan Menken (now 72 and an eight-time Oscar winner) became a Disney juggernaut (penning such scores as “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” Aladdin,” “Newsies,” “Hunchback of Notre Dame” and “Enchanted”), he wrote the downright delightful, infectious music for “Little Shop of Horrors,” which opened in 1982 and became the highest-grossing Off-Broadway show of all time. Not only did the little musical that could get made into a popular 1986 film and launch Menken’s dazzling career, the riotous show has become a community-theater staple (done in... Read More

A new Spotlight Theatre production of the beloved musical, “Little Shop of Horrors” is creeping into the Moline theater this weekend! Directed by Spotlight co-owner Brent Tubbs, and starring Jacob Johnson as Seymour and Becca Johnson (no relation) as Audrey, the Alan Menken/Howard Ashman musical is a dream come true for all three. It opens tonight, Friday, Sept. 24 at 1800 7th Ave., Moline. Based on a Roger Corman B-movie, non-musical cult classic (1960), in the 1982 off-Broadway hit, the meek floral assistant Seymour Krelborn stumbles across a new breed of plant he names “Audrey II” —... Read More

This week is special in more ways than one for the cast and crew of a new Spotlight Theatre production of the beloved musical, “Little Shop of Horrors.” The portentous prologue to the funky, campy, black comedy begins: On the twenty-first day of the month of September In an early year of a decade not too long before our own The human race suddenly encountered a deadly threat to its very existence And this terrifying enemy surfaced as such enemies often do In the seemingly most innocent and unlikely of places… Directed by Spotlight co-owner Brent Tubbs, and starring Jacob Johnson as... Read More