The strange and fascinating plant Audrey II rescues struggling Skid Row business Mushnik’s Flower Shop — at least initially — in the musical “Little Shop of Horrors.”

It also rescued Millennial Theatre Company’s fall musical slot.

The theater originally planned to open “Hair” this weekend, but Director Joe Asente said several factors conspired against it — several other musicals being done locally that diluted the available talent pool, many of its young adult regulars away at college and subject matter that made it impossible to cast anyone younger than 18.

“When we realized that no amount of asking around was going to enable us to fully cast a musical with a cast that size, we decided to pivot to a smaller show, and ‘Little Shop’ was one that came to mind,” he said. It’s one that we’ve kicked around for years …And we knew that the people that we had from auditions would fit these roles well. So it was a good way to pivot to save the slot.”

The Alan Menken-Howard Ashman musical, based on a low-budget 1960 Roger Corman horror film about a plant with a hunger for blood, is a show that can be done with a larger cast, creating an ensemble of Skid Row inhabitants to sing on the group numbers.

MTC is doing it with 10 actors — Edward Bazzell, Hannah Sinclair, Nate Beagle, Josh Fleming, Andy Scott, Kate Del, Sammie Gurd, Ty Hanes, Landon Eli and Ryan Stewart — similar to the current Off-Broadway production.

That choice was driven as much by the size of the stage at Hopewell Theatre, where the musical will play for a three-weekend run starting Friday, as actor availability. Those who’ve seen “Little Shop of Horrors” before know that while the plant starts as a puppet manipulated by Seymour Krelborn (Bazzell), the nebbish plant store employee who discovers it, Audrey II grows into a monster big enough that it requires two puppeteers (Paula Stephenson and Sydney Ohlin) to manipulate it.

“With the space required for the plants and all of its mechanisms, the set had to be rather large to conceal what was needed to be concealed in Act One, and then reveal what’s needed to be revealed in Act Two,” Asente said. “It didn’t leave a lot of room, even if we wanted to have an expanded ensemble. But I saw the show in New York, the Off Broadway version that’s running right now, and, you know, I thought it worked really well with a small cast. It didn’t miss anything that the larger productions have gained by adding the people. So I think it’s a perfect-sized show for a place like Hopewell.”

Ryan Lamb is the production’s music director and Danielle Mentzer is choreographer.

Asente is very familiar with the show. He appeared in productions in high school and at Kent State University at Trumbull. It should be familiar to local audiences as well with both Youngstown Playhouse and Youngstown State University staging it since 2021. But it’s a musical that’s only grown in popularity since its 1982 Off-Broadway debut, in part because its then-unknown composers went on to create songs for such beloved Disney animated films as “The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast.”

“‘Little Shop’ is one of my favorite shows,” Asente said. “It’s one of those that, for me, never gets old. It’s the perfect amount of camp and horror and silliness that I think people want around this time of year, and the music of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, you don’t get better than that.

“There is a space for the ‘Cabarets’ of the world, where you go to the theater wanting an emotional reaction. But with everything going on in the world, a lot of people just want to take that breath and forget what’s going on. And if you’re watching a show about a man-eating plant from outer space, you know that’s about as absurd as it can get and removed from the absurdity of our own lives in 2024.”

If you go …

WHAT: Millennial Theatre Company — “Little Shop of Horrors.”

WHEN: 7:30 Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday through Nov. 3.

WHERE: Hopewell Theatre, 702 Mahoning Ave., Youngstown.

HOW MUCH: Tickets are $25 and are available online at millennialtheatre.org.