Early in the CONVERSATION with Dana Tretta and Christopher Kale Jones about their roles in the superb Mercury Theater Chicago production of “Little Shop of Horrors” directed by L Walter Stearns with musical director Eugene Dizon, we learn just how fiendishly desperate—and painfully real—things are for the star-crossed lovers. Jones plays Seymour Krelborn, the orphaned employee who lives at Mushnik’s Skid Row Floral Shop in the macabre 1982 hit with music by Alan Menken and book and lyrics by Howard Ashman. Seymour has dreams of capturing the affections of his sweet co-worker Audrey played by Tretta, who is mired in an abusive relationship with Dr. Orin, a dentist who lives his life gleefully inflicting pain on others. With Mushnik’s business withering on the vine, the two convince him to showcase an odd little plant, known as ‘Audrey II, that Seymour has been nursing back to life. The trouble is as Audrey II’s influence and appetite grows, everyone else starts looking like the next course on the menu.