The Rocky Horror Show, deliciously warped and timely
Broadway assessment by Adam Feldman
Rating: ★★★★ (4 stars)
Ticketing: Buy tickets to The Rocky Horror Show
“Give yourself over to absolute pleasure,” urges the absurdly named Dr. Frank-N-Furter because the foolish, horny cult musical The Rocky Horror Show nears its frenzied climax. Roundabout Theater Company’s exuberant Broadway revival of the present, directed by Sam Pinkleton and that includes a killer forged led by worldwide heartthrob Luke Evans as Frank, makes roughly the identical invitation. It’s an awfully onerous one to withstand.
Richard O’Brien’s spoof of science-fiction and horror B motion pictures—a delirious mixture of satire, rock & roll and anything-goes queer sensibility—premiered in 1973, as glam rock was giving moralists the vapors. Frank, the story’s strutting all-purpose villain, displays all of that: A self-proclaimed “sweet transvestite” from the planet Transsexual (within the Transylvania galaxy), he is an alien, a mad scientist, a assassin and an all-purpose corrupter of morals, hellbent on sexual in addition to interplanetary conquest. The powerfully spicy Tim Curry originated the position onstage and, extra crucially, within the 1975 movie adaptation, The Rocky Horror Picture Showwhich turned the final word midnight film and impressed rituals of spectatorship—costumes, props, a sensible second script of jokes to be shouted on the display screen—that proceed to this present day.
That interactivity has grow to be a vital a part of the expertise of watching the movie, and a few of its spirit carries over to this immersive revival. The manufacturing’s set, by the design collective known as dots, extends kooky-spooky decor—half spaceship, half haunted home—out to the foyer and into each nook of Studio 54, whose historical past of Nineteen Seventies decadence provides to the louche atmospherics. There are skeletons, film posters, mannequin castles and a row of metallic mannequins within the loge the place half of the band is positioned; silver ducts wind by means of the area, wrapped in strings of inexperienced lights. A number of devoted followers within the viewers put on fishnets, maid uniforms and different Rocky Horror-themed gadgets—is not it good that some folks nonetheless costume up for the theater?—and a few of them yell traces on the stage at key moments, largely from close to the again row. Such moments reverse the same old path of viewers participation; Instead of the actors corralling the spectators into motion (as occurs briefly in the course of the “Time Warp” dance quantity), it is the spectators who provoke the interplay. Would-be contributors are suggested on the outset to keep away from being too disruptive, and they largely comply, particularly throughout songs. (The Narrator sections are open season.) But the potential for such disruption, and the uncertainty of the continued negotiation, provides the efficiency a way of dynamic pressure.
It’s been a sparse Broadway season for musicals, however on the similar time an unusually wealthy one for stellar ensemble casts in reveals which have a number of good elements. We’ve already had Ragtime, Schmigadoon, Titanique and Cats: The Jellicle Ballhowever the Rocky Horror forged is maybe the starriest but. All of the principals have important careers in movie, tv, stage or some mixture of the three—two of them are Oscar nominees—and they do not disappoint. Everyone appears completely recreation; they’ve come to play. Juliette Lewis, dressed fetchingly as a retro usherette, begins the proceedings, purring the opening quantity with coy precision. It’s just a little camp and just a little bizarre—and then, out of the blue, quite a bit camp and quite a bit bizarre, as a pair of outlandish creatures slide down the aisles like showgirls that simply occur to have large eyeballs for heads. (The costumes, by David I. Reynoso, are sensationally artistic all through; Jane Cox’s lighting and Brian Ronan’s are additionally distinguished.)
The pricelessly droll Rachel Dratch, in a smoking jacket, is the grave and foreboding Narrator who units the scenes to return. Andrew Durand and Stephanie Hsu play the healthful Brad and Janet, newly bonded and deeply rooted in squareness, who get stranded with a flat tire on a stormy night time and are pressured to take shelter at a close-by Gothic manse whose gentle they’ve seen by means of the darkish. The creepy servants there—Riff Raff (a seeing Amber Gray, in electrical voice), a ghoulish main domo with an inky mouth, and his sister Magenta (Lewis once more)—make Brad and Janet uneasy however, because the Narrator notes, “they would have to ignore such feelings and take advantage of whatever help was offered.” Little do they know that, quickly sufficient, the assistance shall be making the most of them.
Until this level, Pinkleton has stored the manufacturing wanting modest and low-tech, with assist from a quartet of campily menacing Phantoms who act as backing vocalists and stage fingers. But that adjustments as soon as Brad and Janet enter the fortress’s foremost corridor, whose superb central staircase, partly carpeted in animal print, is surrounded by baroque statuary and lit by dozens of melting candles. It is right here that we lastly meet Frank, the area’s grasp. It can be silly to attempt to imitate Curry’s efficiency, and Evans does not attempt. In some methods, he is extra masculine: Evans, who performed Gaston on movie in Beauty and the Beasthas a mustache and a powerful physique; and, as well—to shiny, high-heeled latex boot—his costume is hard-looking, with a leather-based harness and a outstanding codpiece. But the place Curry’s naughtiness was tinged with posh haughtiness, Evans is extra playful and excitable, at instances nearly girlish. He’s a distinct number of genderqueer, and that retains the portrayal regularly stunning even when you realize the present by coronary heart.
Frank’s nice ambition is to deliver to life his model of Frankenstein’s monster: Rocky, a scorching blond muscle bunny with a head for bleached curls and a bod for sin, packed right into a flesh-toned lace-up singlet. Josh Rivera provides this puppyish love object a touch of actual poignancy; he is a misfit boy toy who might have emotions for each Frank and Janet, who makes use of him to discover her lust within the perky music “Touch-a-Touch-a-Touch–a-Touch Me.” (All of the seduction scenes are well dealt with to up the diploma of consent.) The foremost forged is rounded out by Michaela Jaé Rodriguez because the squeaky Columbia—a glitzed out, blitzed out groupie—and Harvey Guillén as her biker boyfriend, Eddie, who returns in zombiefied type solely to be dispatched by a chainsaw-wielding Frank in a grisly finish that redefines the time period buzz kill. Guillén additionally returns to play Dr. Scott, Eddie’s uncle and Brad and Janet’s former science instructor.
Brad and Janet are the story’s nominal heroes, and the present would not work if Durand and Hsu weren’t so knowledgeable and interesting of their early scenes of virginal naïveté in addition to their later, post-deflowerment ones, when she is feeling newly empowered and he’s feeling correspondingly deflated. But as everybody conversant in Rocky Horror is aware of, Frank is the character you care about, for all his nefarious deeds. Frank-N-Furter events aren’t sausage events, and neither is that this manufacturing, whose ensemble consists of homosexual and trans actors together with two straight cis girls enjoying males. Through Frank, O’Brien has created a secure zone for oddballs: a sexual dreamland of default pansexuality the place deviance is the norm. No surprise the present and the film have attracted such passionate followers: Rocky Horrornot regardless of its goofiness however due to it, represents. And though he’s ultimately punished, consistent with B film conventions—“Society must be protected”—there is a sense by which Frank wins: within the ongoing legacy of this musical to weirdos all over the place. In tempestuous instances like ours, it holds out the hope of a liberating gentle, not too distant.
The Rocky Horror Show. Studio 54 (broadway). Book, music and lyrics by Richard O’Brien. Directed by Sam Pinkleton. With Luke Evans, Stephanie Hsu, Andrew Durand, Amber Gray, Juliette Lewis, Rachel Dratch, Josh Rivera, Harvey Guillén, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez. Running time: 1hr 50mins. One intermission.
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