The Rocky Horror Show review – campy musical returns to Broadway in need of an energy boost
Studio 54, New York
The 1973 cult favorite is back with a stacked cast, including Juliette Lewis, Luke Evans and Rachel Dratch, but only flashes of genuine fun
Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show, a campy 1973 musical inspired by sci-fi and horror B-movies, has lived a long and fruitful life. But its 1975 film adaptation, by some measure the longest-running theatrical release in US history, has almost inarguably overshadowed that legacy. The film’s song selection, plotting and performances – from Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon and others – have been enshrined as the definitive Rocky Horror. Which doesn’t mean that a revival of the stage show arrives without fanfare, only that the experience of actually watching it may underwhelm.
That was, at least, my experience during the third Broadway mounting of Rocky Horror at Studio 54. The production’s announcement was much ballyhooed, with excitement particularly centered on the starry cast assembled. West End boy turned tough-guy movie star Luke Evans plays mad scientist cross-dresser Frank-n-Furter (the role made famous by Curry). Oscar nominee Stephanie Hsu is Janet (played by Sarandon in the film). Juliette Lewis is Magenta, Saturday Night Live vet Rachel Dratch is the Narrator. Those in the know were also heartened that the revival is directed by Sam Pinkleton, who recently worked queer-comedy wonders with Oh, Mary!, a new member of the rarefied class of enduring Broadway hits.
And thus one enters the theater, washed in tacky, garish lighting and stuffed with kitschy accoutrement, with a feeling of antici- … pation. (Apologies for making the required reference.) At first, those high hopes are satisfied. Lewis opens the show with a wobbly but charming rendition of Science Fiction Double Feature. Hsu and Andrew Durand, who plays Janet’s fiance Brad, then winsomely carry us into the plot (if you can call it that) while Pinkleton’s analogue bits of stagecraft – hands poking out from curtains, tiny models of Frank-n-Furter’s accursed mansion popping up as Brad and Janet make their way closer to it – telegraph the merry silliness to come.
But not too long after this agreeable scene-setting, the energy sags. The crispness that Pinkleton brought to Oh, Mary! is not present here; there is more of what feels like aimless shuffling around the stage than should be encountered during a costly night (or afternoon) at the theater. A shadow cast acting out the movie during an umpteenth midnight screening? Sure, they’re allowed to be a little listless. But one would certainly prefer that a professional version of Rocky Horror be tighter, more relentlessly in pursuit of our attention.
One increasingly misses the assuredness of the film, as Pinkleton’s staging tilts ever more into blurry abstraction. There are, to be fair, scattered highlights that briefly snap things back into focus. Evans, in the appropriate heels and bustier but saddled with a strangely limp and wet-looking wig, is unsteady with Frank-n-Furter’s dialogue; he appears a tad self-conscious, unwilling to commit to the character’s high melodrama. But he comes alive in his songs, especially when he lets his rich, Elton John-ian tenor reach full blare in I’m Going Home, the prettiest of several pretty songs on the setlist.
Dratch is often a hoot as the Narrator, gamely talking back to those in the audience shouting out the semi-scripted responses that fly willy-nilly during just about any screening of the film. But the comedy drops rather steeply from there. Particularly ineffective is Harvey Guillén as Eddie, who is barely audible during the frenzied clamor of Hot Patootie, a number staged in a confused hurry. Guillén is more successful later on as Dr Scott, but by then Pinkleton has become overwhelmed by O’Brien’s helter-skelter plotting, letting beats and jokes whiz by incoherently.
It’s all too easy to get the impression that the cast and crew have an idea of what the show is doing which they are not then properly communicating to the audience. Perhaps too much familiarity is assumed. Indeed, there were many devotees in attendance at my performance who were more than happy to do some of the lifting. But there were plenty of others around me who seemed at sea, including two adolescent kids and their mom who did not return for act two. Ideally a show charging hundreds of dollars a seat (in most cases) would make things more legible than Pinkleton has, to best ensure that everyone is having a good time, not just those who have heard these lines, and said their own, countless times before. A Rocky Horror revival should be an opportunity to mint new fans, rather than mere time warp back to remembered nights at the movies.
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