Tonight I went to see Litla Hryllings Búðin at the Icelandic Opera. Yep. Little Shop of Horrors in Icelandic. Now, I’ve done Little Shop a few times in my life and at this point have the thing memorized. This made it fairly easy to follow.

The set design was really good, it looked like a run-down neighborhood in Reykjavík, which meant that it looked like crumbling concrete. Well…even the good neighborhoods have crumbling concrete, but this had grafitti too. Seymo–excuse me, Baldur’s voice was very strong, as was the man playing the Dentist. I was disappointed with the puppet, in a large part because I think the director just ignored it.

In fact, there were a number of place where I felt like the director just didn’t get the show. For instance, when the Dentist enters for the first time, he is normally wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket. Not in this production. He just had on the dentist smock…which meant that in Act II when Seym–Baldur shows Audre–Auður that he has a new black leather motorcycle jacket, it makes no sense.

There were other things like this, but it was still a very enjoyable evening.