Jake Gyllenhaal Cast in ‘Little Shop of Horrors’
Suddenly, Seymour is hot
April 15, 2015
Jake Gyllenhaal at the Golden Globe Awards on January 11, 2015. (Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)
Well, my Twitter feed exploded yesterday, and it wasn’t a delayed reaction to Hillary Clinton’s announcement that—surprise, surprise!—she would be seeking the Democratic nomination for the presidency of the United States, or that Marco Rubio (who? That’s the water-drinking guy, right?) would be seeking the Republican one. No, in my rarified universe, everyone is losing their minds over the astonishing news that Jake Gyllenhaal will be playing Seymour Krelborn in New York City Center’s upcoming revival of Little Shop of Horrors.
That’s right. The cutest Jewish boy in the entire world (that’s not an opinion, that’s a statement of fact) is taking on the role of the ultimate nerd (see Rick Moranis in the 1986 film version, an indelible performance by the ultimate portrayer of ultimate nerds) in a big old Broadway musical. Be still all of our hearts.
It’s an interesting choice, and while it would seem at first that Gyllenhaal, of the soulful eyes and tastefully buff body, is playing against type, the reality is he’s playing very much into it. Hear me out: the beautiful woman who doesn’t appear to know she’s a knockout is a Hollywood trope; a classic male fantasy. The bookish librarian or mousy secretary who takes off her glasses, lets down her hair and—“Why, Miss Jones! You’re beautiful!” The confident man is gratified by the idea that he is surrounded only by attractive women, even when they’re technically unattractive; the shy/insecure man with the satisfaction that he’s found a gorgeous woman that can never be taken from him, because he alone realizes she’s pretty.
The subversion of this image, however, in which a nebbish-y, not-exactly-a-matinee-idol guy is seen, in the eyes of the properly sweet and slightly desperate female, as exactly that, is a deeply Jewish one. It’s literalized in the construct of Clark Kent/Superman, which has been exhaustively explored by smarter culture writers than me as an extremely specific rendering of the American-Jewish fantasy experience, and replayed again and again in every film or stage play (fill in with your Woody Allen/Neil Simon/Paul Mazursky project here) where the short, bespectacled guy gets the girl, who values his intelligence and humor. As the lyric in Little Shop goes, as leading lady Audrey debates Seymour’s charms over that of her sadistic dentist boyfriend, Orin Scrivello, DDS: “Still that Seymour’s a cutie/Well, if not, he has inner beauty.”
What happens when Seymour really is a cutie? Well, I’ll tell you: it turns the nebbish stereotype from one that generally benefits the male in the equation to one that is firmly, and refreshingly, under the female gaze. It’s a radical reading of the show, not to mention quite a treat for his Audrey, to be played in this case by Ellen Greene, the original Audrey of stage and screen (who is wonderful, and also, 64 years old. And they say Jewish men have issues with their mothers.) Gyllenhaal’s Seymour will be shy, awkward, decent—and also, underneath his glasses (or probably, even with them) mind-blowingly hot. Of course, he gets eaten by a plant.
Rachel Shukert is the author of the memoirs Have You No Shame? and Everything Is Going To Be Great,and the novel Starstruck. She is the creator of the Netflix show The Baby-Sitters Club, and a writer on such series as GLOW and Supergirl. Her Twitter feed is @rachelshukert.
