Having loaded the soundtrack onto my iPod, I've been thinking of Little Shop of Horrors a good deal recently. I'll tell you more about the the renvisioned play was working up a few years ago at some later point, but for now I want to share I thought I had while making lunch.

I hate "removing the supernatural element and replacing it with crazy people" as much as anyone, but that didn't stop me from finding this interesting.

The "Audrey II" plant is carnivorous, and able to consume human flesh; however it is not sentient. The personality that the plant displays is in fact Seymour's id.

Seymour, having had a wretched childhood living on the streets and a not much improved pubescence under the so-called "care" of Mr. Mushnik, becomes obsessed with an unusual and possibly mutated breed of flytrap, projecting the attention he himself craves onto it. He thinks Audrey, a girl he works with, more worthy of love and attention than himself. As such, he names it after her. This does not stop him from identifying with the plant.

When he presents the plant to his boss, the affection-proxy succeeds in it's task and brings success to the shop at large. This improves his standing with both Audrey and Mushnik, who (in the stage version) finally adopts him. While he feels at first that the success is his, he then remembers that he had not altered his behavior and that the only change was the addition of Audrey II.

As he attempts to separate himself mentally from the plant, Seymour witnesses for the first time the object of his affections being physically abused by her boyfriend, Dr. Scrivello. Already on rocky mental ground, Seymour has a mental breakdown.

After having a conversation with his id, he makes a plan to fulfill his baser instincts by killing and replacing his romantic rival. He then convinces himself that he had been struggling with this concept for a while, but Dr. Scrivello's actions pushed him over the edge to commit murder. Having done so, he justifies this by telling himself that the plant needed him to do this all along.

However, once he has done so he finds it is extremely difficult to feed an entire human corpse to something where it's mouth and stomach are one and the same, and needs to chop the body up in order to dispose of it.

All murders committed, with the possible exception of Audrey, were of people that Seymour himself wanted dead. In "Suppertime", Mr. Mushnik, largely responsible for the miserable existence which has been the majority of Seymour's life, confronts Seymour, attempts to blackmail him and worse, tries to make him see the reality of the situation: plants don't sing and it's only your own fault if you kill someone, even by laissez-faire. The plant sings to Seymour in front of Mr. Mushnik, but Mushnik does not notice a six-foot-tall singing flytrap. The reason for this that works best into this version is that is the id, Audrey II, is justifying the murder he is about to commit to the ego, Seymour. Not being in Seymour's head, Mushnik is not privy to this conversation. Seymour gives into the desire to destroy Mushnik and replace him, the same way destroyed and replaced Dr. Scrivello. He disposes of the body the way he had the first time.

Audrey suggests that he and Seymour leave the city, his success and all that he has done. Enraged that he had committed two murders that turned out to be pointless, he reveals what he has done, which to his mind is Audrey meeting Audrey II. He then lashes out at Audrey, accidentally killing her. (this follows the stage version, not the movie. I suppose, an equally chilling explanation for the movie's ending is that Audrey, flattered at what has been done for her sake, accepts Seymour as a delusional murderer and agrees to live with that knowledge. She does have a bad history with men.) Having killed her, he then feeds her to the plant, partially out of habit and partially in order to fulfill her wish of finally being somewhere that's green.