Little Shop's Sketchy Start, the Future of Hercules, New Mermaid Songs & More from Alan Menken on Show People

Composer Alan Menken has won 11 Grammy Awards, eight Academy Awards and a Tony Award and has scored the wildly popular Disney properties The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and Newsies. Fans recently clamored to see the Public Works limited run staging of Hercules , which featured five new songs. After the incredible success of the live action adaptations of Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin (which each grossed over $1 billion internationally), he's now working on new songs for an upcoming big screen The Little Mermaid with Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda. But before all of these shining, shimmering, splendid projects came to be, Menken and his longtime collaborator, the late Howard Ashman, joined forces for Little Shop of Horrors, an instant hit that is now receiving a buzzed-about off-Broadway revival with Jonathan Groff, Tammy Blanchard and Christian Borle. Menken discussed Little Shop's early days, knowing Lin-Manuel Miranda, Darren Criss and other power players way back when and more on Show People with Paul Wontorek.

Here are some of the must-see highlights:

NICE UP-AND-COMERS
“My daughter went to the University of Michigan for musical theater. She goes, ‘Oh, there’s this boy Darren [Criss], who is playing guitar in this coffee shop. He plays a lot of your songs.’ So I went in. This young boy is hunched over his guitar singing, ‘I wanna be where the people are.’ I was so touched. I left him a $50 tip. I would hear about, ‘This is Pasek and Paul.’ I said, ‘Oh, isn’t that nice.’ And look at them now. My niece went to the Hunter School with both Bobby Lopez and Lin-Manuel [Miranda]. My sister would tell me about these very talented boys. I’d go, ‘Oh, isn’t that nice.’ And look at them now.”

LITTLE SHOP BELONGS SOMEWHERE INFESTED
“WPA Theater [where Little Shop of Horrors originatlly played in 1982 before transferring to the Orpheum Theatre] was on the third floor of Fifth Avenue and 19th Street. We were right underneath a massage parlor. It was a 99-seat theater. The air conditioning worked sporadically. Little Shop belongs in a small, intimate space. You know, if the sanitation was a little worse, it would be even better. If there were rats, it’d be even better. Little Shop really belongs in a hole in the wall. That’s where it was conceived. I like the fact that it's being done this way [now at the Westside Theatre]. Howard [Ashman] said, 'I think it's the dark side of Grease,' and everything fell into place from there. It was a phenomenon. We instantly had producers banging on the door. There was clearly something very, very special about this. Friends would say, ‘You guys got a big green goldmine here.’”

HOWARD ASHMAN'S SECRET
“Howard was sick from the time we were working on The Little Mermaid [Ashman died of AIDS-related illness in 1991 at the age of 40], but he wasn’t telling anyone. He wasn’t telling me. When there was any physical symptom, he would say it was something else. We had to keep it a secret ourselves because in those days, you wouldn’t be working. I will say when the Disney company finally had to be told, they were great. But Little Mermaid, Beauty and Aladdin were all created with that huge shadow over him.”

NEW SONGS IN THE LITTLE MERMAID
“We’re like four or five new songs in. We’re really having a good time writing it together. We’re writing a new song for Eric. We’re writing a new song for Ariel. We’re writing a new song for Scuttle.”

WILL HERCULES GO THE DISTANCE?
"I've wanted to do [a staging of Hercules] for years. It was a little bit like Newsies, where sometimes material just marinates very well: Newsies marinated. Hercules marinated. Coming back to it, we brought much more dimension and richness to it. I don't know what the plan is yet. We're all going to try to figure it out because it was very special."

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