Despite being a little lost in the large Canberra Theatre space, this production of Little Shop of Horrors has style and intelligence and all the black humour fans of the piece would expect.

The show's origins in Roger Corman's 1960 black and white shoestring SF budget film are echoed in the first act's arresting design. Corman's film spawned a musical in 1982 which Frank Oz directed as a film in 1986 and the second act is taken over by the colours of those later versions, especially by the lush and heaving Audrey II, the plant that bids fair to take over the world.

It's a dark piece, with an uncompromising edge. Mild-mannered and down trodden Seymour (Brent Hill) works in a failing flower shop run by Mr Mushnik (Tyler Coppin) in a poverty-struck suburb. Also on the staff is the rather lost Audrey (Esther Hannaford) whose dentist boyfriend Orin (Scott Johnson) treats her appallingly. Seymour has developed an unusual plant that he names shyly, and slightly obliquely, after her.

When Audrey II is placed in the window it amazingly attracts growing custom. Mushnik's flourishes and Mushnik even adopts Seymour as his son.

But Audrey II is a monster. It demands no less than fresh human blood and proceeds to work on Seymour's desire for love and success to guarantee that it is regularly fed. And every time it is fed it grows even bigger.

SBS's Lee Lin Chin appears surreally on a black and white screen to narrate, while outside under a looming stormy sky three street singers (Josie Lane, Chloe Zuel and Angelique Cassimatis) in early '60s get-up comment sharply on the action. However, the sound needs to take better care to have their lyrics clearly heard. Owen Phillips' set with its huge electricity poles leaning over Mushnik's shop and Ross Graham's starker moments of lighting increase the sense of menace.

Coppin's seedy Mushnik and Johnson's obsessively violent Orin support the central couple's story with some panache. Hannaford and Hill express the human yearnings of Seymour and Audrey especially touchingly in the numbers Suddenly Seymour and Audrey's Somewhere That's Green. Hill wrestles convincingly with Seymour's moral dilemmas. And Hannaford is a superbly ethereal yet brittle Audrey.

But it is puppet designers and makers Erth who rightly dominate the show with the ever growing Audrey II, voiced somehow live by Hill and manipulated by the cast. Their mighty creation finally comes to resemble a magnificently horrific cross between a cabbage and a choko with a bit of writhing taro thrown in.

There are no easy endings in such an apocalyptic show. It's a comic book but it has a moral heart. The plants and vegetables at the Farmers Market may never look the same again. Go and enjoy.