DeLuise, a Hungry Plant . . . and More

Dom DeLuise began his career as an actor at the High School of Performing Arts in New York City. “I became a comedian,” he said, “when they laughed at my serious acting.”

Since then, DeLuise, 58, has appeared in hit movies and television shows, as a stand-up comedian in Las Vegas, even in several operas. This week, he stars in the Long Beach Civic Light Opera’s production of “Little Shop of Horrors,” being performed through July 26.

The musical, a dark comedy based on the 1960 Roger Corman B-movie about a human-eating plant in a Skid Row flower shop, features an eclectic mix of rock, pop and Latin jazz written by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, recent winners of an Academy Award for the music and lyrics of “Beauty and the Beast.”

DeLuise plays Mr. Mushnik, the nearly bankrupt flower shop owner. Willy Falk, nominated in 1991 for a Tony Award for the starring role in “Miss Saigon,” is Seymour, the nerdy clerk who finds the plant cutting that brings the cast fame and misfortune. The shop’s other clerk, Audrey, is played by Eydie Alyson, who starred in the off-Broadway production that won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical in 1983.

“It’s a wonderful love story,” DeLuise said. Audrey and Seymour are “both misfits who don’t belong in the world and they find each other,” he said. “I suppose you could say it’s about a plant who eats people, but I think it’s a lot more.”

DeLuise has been in show business since the age of 8, when he appeared in a production of “Peter Rabbit” at his Brooklyn elementary school. He is best known for his work with director Mel Brooks in “Blazing Saddles,” “Silent Movie,” “History of the World--Part I” and “Spaceballs” and for his films with Burt Reynolds, including “Smokey and the Bandit II,” “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” and “The End.”

Most recently, he has worked on the films “All Dogs Go to Heaven” and “American Tale II: Fievel Goes West.” He is host of television’s “The New Candid Camera” and has appeared in the Los Angeles Opera Company’s “Orpheus in the Underworld” and in a Metropolitan Opera Company production of “Die Fledermaus.”

As long as DeLuise is entertaining people, he is happy, he said. “I like the whole process. I’ve never gone to work and wanted to do something else.”

“Little Shop of Horrors” will be performed Tuesday through Saturday at 8 p.m., with matinees today, Saturday and July 26 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $14 to $24. If available, tickets for students, senior citizens and military personnel are half price 30 minutes before show time at the Terrace Theater, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach. Information: (310) 432-7926.