Wesley Geary, from left, rehearses with Kendall Hicks and Nickole Custodio for Saguaro City Music Theatre’s production of β€œLittle Shop of Horrors.”

Tucson’s newest theater company is staging its third production in 18 months.

Saguaro City Music Theatre is mounting the musical comedy β€œLittle Shop of Horrors” through Oct. 29 at the Berger Performing Arts Center, 1200 W. Speedway, on the Arizona Schools for the Deaf and Blind campus.

β€œIt was a great opportunity to offer a deliciously exciting Faustian tale of an evil man-eating plant on Friday the 13th,” said Saguaro City Artistic Director and cofounder Drew Humphrey. β€œIt’s a story that, because it appears so frequently in other forms in our culture, is very familiar to everybody.”

The story of the florist who discovers a plant that feeds on human blood dates back to the 1960 Roger Corman film β€œLittle Shop of Horrors.” The story was fantastical and silly and the perfect candidate for an off-Broadway musical adaptation by composer Alan Menken and writer Howard Ashman.

Danny Fapp, left, gets a friendly smack from fellow β€œLittle House of Horrors” costar Christopher Younggren during rehearsals for Saguaro City Music Theatre’s production of the comic/horror musical β€œLittle Shop of Horrors.”

The show, featuring a professional cast and small band performing live, is a follow-up to Saguaro City’s production in June of β€œSeussical the Musical.” The company β€” which Tucson native Humphrey founded with his wife, Dena DiGiancinto, and Charlie Ingram after Humphrey and DiGiancinto moved to Tucson in fall 2021 β€” introduced itself with β€œIt’s A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play” in December 2022.

In addition to its professional theater side, Saguaro City Music Theatre offers musical theater training for youths with disabilities.

β€œWe are able to get in kids who have never, ever had access to theater at all. They really love it and we are seeing kids get bit by the (theater) bug,” said DiGiancinto, who met Humphrey when they worked at St. Louis’s Variety Children’s Theater, which works with children with disabilities.

DiGiancinto, Saguaro City’s director of outreach and education, said some of those kids could be featured in the company’s holiday show β€œMatilda,” which runs Dec. 22-Jan. 7.

Tickets for β€œLittle Shop of Horrors” are $25-$55 through saguarocity.org/tickets. Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Fridays, 2 and 7 p.m. Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays. The Oct. 29 show will be at 1 p.m.

Little Shop of Horrors: See the moment an unsuspecting fly meets its demise, as captured by photographer Jamie Cooper.Β 


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Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@tucson.com. On Twitter @Starburch