Broadway evaluate 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, attractive cult musical The Rocky Horror Show nears its frenzied climax. Roundabout Theatre 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 arduous one to withstand.
Richard O’Brien’s spoof of science-fiction and horror B films—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’s 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 function onstage and, extra crucially, within the 1975 movie adaptation, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which turned the last word midnight film and impressed rituals of viewership—costumes, props, a sensible second script of jokes to be shouted on the display screen—that proceed to today.
That interactivity has change into an important a part of the expertise of seeing the movie, and a few of its spirit carries over to this immersive revival. The manufacturing’s set, by the design collective referred to 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 the house, wrapped in strings of inexperienced lights. Just a few devoted followers within the viewers put on fishnets, maid uniforms and different Rocky Horror-themed gadgets—isn’t it good that some folks nonetheless costume up for the theater?—and a few of them yell strains on the stage at key moments, largely from close to the again row. Such moments reverse the standard route of viewers participation; as a substitute of the actors corralling the spectators into motion (as does occur briefly through the “Time Warp” dance quantity), it’s the spectators who provoke the interplay. Would-be individuals 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 of such disruption, and the uncertainty of the continuing negotiation, offers the efficiency a way of dynamic stress.
It’s been a sparse Broadway season for musicals, however on the similar time an unusually wealthy one for stellar ensemble casts in exhibits which have a number of good elements. We’ve already had Ragtime, Schmigadoon, Titanique and Cats: The Jellicle Ball, however the Rocky Horror forged is probably the starriest but. All of the principals have vital careers in movie, tv, stage or some mixture of the three—two of them are Oscar nominees—and they don’t disappoint. Everyone appears completely sport; 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 slightly camp and slightly bizarre—and then, all of a sudden, rather a lot camp and rather a lot 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 inventive 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 come back. Andrew Durand and Stephanie Hsu play the healthful Brad and Janet, newly affianced and deeply rooted in squareness, who get stranded with a flat tire on a stormy night time and are compelled to take shelter at a close-by Gothic manse whose mild they’ve seen by the darkish. The creepy servants there—Riff Raff (a seething 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 might be benefiting from them.
Until this level, Pinkleton has saved the manufacturing trying modest and low-tech, with assist from a quartet of campily menacing Phantoms who act as backing vocalists and stage palms. But that modifications as soon as Brad and Janet enter the citadel’s predominant 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 doesn’t strive. In some methods, he’s extra masculine: Evans, who performed Gaston on movie in Beauty and the Beast, has a mustache and a formidable physique; and, as well—to shiny, high-heeled latex boot—his costume is hard-looking, with a leather-based harness and a distinguished codpiece. But the place Curry’s naughtiness was tinged with posh haughtiness, Evans is extra playful and excitable, at occasions virtually girlish. He’s a special number of genderqueer, and that retains the portrayal frequently 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 sizzling 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 offers this puppyish love object a touch of actual poignancy; he’s 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 track “Touch-a-Touch-a-Touch–a-Touch Me.” (All of the seduction scenes are well dealt with to up the diploma of consent.) The predominant 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 zombified 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 trainer.
Brad and Janet are the story’s nominal heroes, and the present wouldn’t work if Durand and Hsu weren’t so skilled 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 acquainted with Rocky Horror is aware of, Frank is the character you care about, for all his nefarious deeds. Frank-N-Furter events should not sausage events, and neither is that this manufacturing, whose ensemble contains homosexual and trans actors together with two straight cis girls enjoying males. Through Frank, O’Brien has created a protected 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 Horror, not regardless of its goofiness however due to it, represents. And though he’s ultimately punished, in step with B film conventions—“Society must be protected”—there’s a way by which Frank wins: within the ongoing legacy of this musical to weirdos all over the place. In tempestuous occasions like ours, it holds out the hope of a liberating mild, not too far-off.
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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