#wheres orin scrivello dds when you need him

[spot-light-system]

GUYS OUR TEETH HURT SO BAD KMS KMS KMS😭😭😭 i have no fucking idea what to do HELP😭🙏

I hate

[desastre-fag]

Why I believe Audrey two is Seymour's subconscious and not a man eating plant.

I need everyone to hold my hands, look me in the eyes and listen carefully when I say this is my own interpretation based on the musical 2022 production with jeremy jordan and christian borle.

Trigger warnings for: themes of mental illness especially psychosis, mentions of suicide, murder, dismemberment, paranoid delusions, reality not being what it seems, blood and gore and anything else in relation to little shop of horrors.

OK ANYWAYS ON WITH IT !

point number one: Seymour is not mentally well.

He is so open to persuasion and peer pressure as shown not only by how quickly he folds when audrey II asks him to feed him BLOOD but also with how easily mushnik is able to make him his son (my baby seymour is so lonely and desperate for any positive attention). He definitely has depression and in this theory i believe he also suffers from psychosis. The initial feedings to audrey II are acts of self harm as a result of his mental illness.

point number two: audrey II as an extension of seymour.

Audrey II becomes a confidant to seymour, especially when facing ethical dilemmas and his own moral ideals - see feed me (get it) where he becomes convinced orin deserves to die - however i don't think that it is as literal as it is shown on stage. audrey II is an extension of seymour's conscious and subconscious that seymour's psychosis creates as a visual outlet for his own feelings. In reality i theorised that audrey II is a simple plant. although it IS a new discovery it does not become sentient but still brings fame and fortune to mushnik's florist. You may be wondering, well why does he feed it blood then? MENTAL ILLNESS BABEY!!! bringing us back to point one that seymour's subconscious needs to rationalise everything, including that he needs to "feed" this plant to keep revenue coming and reward it for bringing him fame.

point number three: seymour's hands.

Let's skip forward a little bit to when seymour tells mushnik that he needs to go into the plant to retrieve their money. Specifically during this production (as far as i know) seymour gestures to audrey II whilst its mouth opens and then when it begins to close onto mushnik, he stares at his hands and turns them over - reminiscent of characters who have killed and stare at their hands in shock/ in awe of blood that coats them. I believe that seymour does this to show that mushnik does not actually get eaten by audrey II in reality, but is instead murdered by seymour using his hands and then dismembered - similar to orin - and hidden in soil around the florist, but mainly in audrey II.

point number four: audrey II relaying seymour's inner thoughts.

When mushnik confronts seymour initially about his murder of orin and asks him to go to the police, audrey II comes alive with another presence on the stage for the first time in the show (i do not count when someone is being fed to audrey II e.g orin's corpse/mushnik getting into audrey II or audience interaction). Audrey II drives paranoia into seymour's forefront of his mind with his words, getting more and more intense as mushnik tells him to go to the police and prove his innocence. Seymour's irrational and paranoid mind creates this driving force via audrey II, giving him the ability to rationalise the killing of his father figure lest he go to prison.

point number five: orin scrivello DDS.

Orin's death could be labelled a convenient accident - but thats what seymour wants to think - his inaction in helping orin out of the mask is the direct cause of his death and although it is not the same as shooting him point blank, i still consider this an act of murder, the first of many. As mentioned previously seymour is very easily convinced that orin deserves to die for his abusive acts to audrey I, and rationalises that he MUST kill him to feed audrey II who has rewarded him with fame, fortune, and eventually audrey I. He rationalises orin's murder which is the start of his aggressive downward spiral into deeper psychosis and murder and then buries him in audrey II's soil.

point number six: audrey I.

Audrey I is seymour's core desire and main motive for most of his actions - he takes various contracts for money to provide for audrey, he kills orin for audrey's safety, he kills mushnik so he doesn't get turned in for orin's murder and so he can stay with audrey. Everything is centred around audrey because she is a large driving force for seymour. Her influence on him is shown during feed me (get it) in the instrumental section when orin slaps audrey for forgetting her sweater in front of seymour, this is the turning point for seymour's morality and he becomes of the belief some people deserve to die - especially orin.

point six and a half: audrey I going somewhere that's green.

Now let's get to the more complicated part of audrey I's death. NO ONE PANIC I AM NOT THROWING AWAY THE THEORY BECAUSE SEYMOUR ISN'T IN THE SCENE INITIALLY THAT'S ACTUALLY AN IMPORTANT PART OF IT. Seymour experiences a pure psychotic break, hence audrey II being the only one present for the scene initially and conversing with audrey I for the first time. Audrey II IS seymour, just the part of him he harshly represses and barely acknowledges, hence the manifestation of audrey II as a man eating plant. He accidentally fatally injures audrey I and as she dies in his arms, he needs to rationalise it all as a lone act committed by audrey II and not himself. Seymour buries her in the soil along with orin and mushnik.

point seven: audrey II and detaching seymour from reality.

Audrey II serves as a way for seymour to disconnect himself from the reality of his crimes, creating a completely separate entity deemed to feed on blood (fresh and human - why was that specified? to rationalise the murders) and has evil motives (world conquest). What we see is not reality, but what seymour sees.

point eight: seymour's death/suicide.

We see seymour dive into audrey II in an attempt to kill it from the inside, in line with this theory i see this as seymour committing suicide in horror at his own acts and the part of him which manifested as audrey II in his mind. He willingly enters the 'man eating plant' which he has seen eat three separate people with only a small machete, implying he wouldn't know the outcome is death implies he is an idiot. i have theorised that he comes to after audrey I's death and burial and in horror and shame of his murderous acts and the way he justified them he chooses to kill himself - mostly due to the death of audrey I - in order to kill the part of him that allowed those things to happen. Kind of a Jekyll and Hyde situation, killing yourself to kill the second person inhabiting your body and brain.

point nine: the finale.

The finale we see is seymour's final brain functions, bringing all his rationalisations and delusions to a head, where audrey II lives on and goes on to conquer the world with millions of other man eating plants. He gets to see all his victims one final time, and shares a warning to not feed the plants, no matter what they offer you - do not feed delusions or rationalise evil deeds no matter the positive outcomes. Speaking of positive outcomes !

point ten: the rewards system tied to audrey II.

What emphasises and solidifies the rationalisations and delusions are the positive things that happen around seymour as he kills, such as getting into a relationship with audrey I, money, popularity, getting adopted, multiple contracts etc. Reminder that what we see in the show is seymour's perceptions, and that i theorise in reality they are much less positive and are blown out of proportion by seymour so that they are a significant positive outcome of his negative acts. He does not get together with audrey I, they simply interact more than before, the contracts are bad deals, the money isn't as great as it seems, he gets adopted but as we see in the show it is for ulterior motives (seymour sees it as an act of pure love).

conclusion:

I have little shop of horrors brain rot and i love this theory so much it adds a whole new layer to the show, especially the ending ! love the character of audrey II but i also love the idea that he is a manifestation of seymour's subconscious and not actually a man eating plant.

i did not proofread this. hope you enjoyed :)