Skip to main content

The Rocky Horror Show

The Playhouse, Edinburgh

Four stars

 

It is more than fifty years now since a kinky corset fashioned for a Glasgow Citizens Theatre production of Jean Genet’s The Maids was taken to London by Tim Curry to help launch a bona fide counter-cultural crossover classic. Half a century on, Richard O’Brien’s glamtastic piece of cult fiction remains the theatrical monster that refuses to lie down and die. This latest tour of director Christopher Luscombe’s long running revival of O’Brien’s gender bending opus stays true both to the show’s sub Warholian  trash aesthetic and its fringe theatre roots, even as it has become a vehicle for real life stars.

 

Cue Jason Donovan, who dons stockings, suspenders and what probably isn’t costume designer Sue Blane’s original corset as Frank-N-Furter, the cross dressing mad scientist who tempts lost innocents Brad and Janet into his spooky lair that all the freaks call home. Donovan makes his entrance following the hip hugging ensemble routine accompanying the show’s breakout floor filler, The Time Warp, to a hero's welcome. Despite this, while clearly having fun, he plays things as straight as his character allows.

 

Connor Carson and Lauren Chia make a suitably geeky Brad and Janet, whose exposure to Frank-N-Furter’s intergalactic shenanigans leads to their own belated sexual liberation, with Edward Bullingham’s himbo Rocky showing the way. Natasha Hoeberigs as Magenta and Jayme-Lee Zanoncelli’s Columbia keep the party going, while Job Greuter leads from behind as Riff Raff.

 

The regular Rocky Horror audience are of course well known for plundering the dressing up box themselves as well as breaking the fourth wall with a series of well practiced exchanges. These are either more respectful and less boisterous than they used to be, or else there are a fair few Rocky Horror virgins in the house. Either way, the heckles are something Nathan Caton as the Narrator bounces off with some very up to the minute references regarding real world absurdities.

 

O’Brien’s Frankenstein-like mash-up of sci-fi B-movie pastiche, first generation rock and roll homage and a post swinging sixties libertine spirit was clearly in tune with the times from whence it was spawned. Even with the umpteen layers of retro cool baggage the show has acquired across decades, however, it now looks like it was quite possibly ahead of those times. In its campy celebration of oddball otherness, Rocky Horror shows no sign of letting up any time soon. It lives again, immortality guaranteed. The time warp goes on.


The Herald, January 21st 2024

 

ends

 

 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Passage – Hip Rebel Degenerates: Black, White and Red All Over

Prelude – The Power of Three   Fear. Power. Love. This life-and-death (un)holy trinity was the driving force and raisons d’être of The Passage, the still largely unsung Manchester band sired in what we now call the post-punk era, and who between 1978 and 1983 released four albums and a handful of singles.    Led primarily by composer Dick Witts, The Passage bridged the divide between contemporary classical composition and electronic pop as much as between the personal and the political. In the oppositional hotbed of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide, The Passage fused agit-prop and angst, and released a song called Troops Out as a single. The song offered unequivocal support for withdrawing British troops from Northern Ireland.    They wrote Anderton’s Hall, about Greater Manchester’s born again right wing police chief, James Anderton, and, on Dark Times, rubbed Brechtian polemic up against dancefloor hedonism. On XOYO, their most commercial and potentially mo...
Post a Comment
Read more