Because there’s the revival of Rocky Horror opened on Broadway this week, I thought it was a good time to finally post about my trip to the UK Rocky Horror Show tour. Now I saw this back in January when it was in Sheffield, as an extra treat as part of my trip there to see the Figure Skating, but as Rocky is almost always touring the UK, I have been holding onto this since then.
Now if you’ve been living under a rock(y), the Rocky Horror Show is Richard O’Brien’s rock n roll musical tribute to science fiction and horror B-movies that he grew up watching. It turned 50 last year and was the subject of a (very good) documentary about the early days of the show, and the making of the legendary cult movie. The musical has been touring the UK (and other parts of the world) almost constantly ever since and fans will turn up in costume, shout out to the cast and it’s generally a very different experience from going to any other musical.
I first saw Rocky 20 years ago (almost exactly) in the previous touring version, with David Bedella as Frank N Furter, and although I saw it a bunch of times after that first one, I realised as I sat down in the stalls that I’d actually never seen another actor play Frank live. So this was a first on that front. And since the last time I saw Rocky, there’s also been a bit of an update on the sets and a few tweaks to costumes and staging, although it has to be said that Rocky is Rocky, and like The Producers, a lot of it s is sort of baked in, although in this case it’s also because the audience has expectations as well as it being in the script.
And I had a lot of fun. It was great to see the changes to the staging and costumes, but it still felt like the Rocky that I remember. That said, the rocky I remember has David Bedella in it, a man with more charisma in a little finger than many people have in their entire body. The things that man can do with a raised eyebrow. Anyway. I saw Stephen Webb as Frank (Jason Donovan is doing some dates of this tour) and he is good, but he’s no Bedella. That said, if you haven’t experienced the wonder of Bedella as Frank, he may hit a little differently for you. As ever, when you’re really familiar with a property or a performance it’s hard to work out how a first timer would see things.
Where I thought there as a big improvement on previous iterations was the narrator. I saw Nathan Caton, who is a stand up comedian as the Narrator, and he was really, really good at handling the audience participation side of things. I’ve seen a few narrators who get a bit flustered or didn’t quite know how to deal with the more aggressive/persistent audience members, but Caton had it nailed. I think the experience of being a stand up meant he knew what he was doing with hecklers and dealt with them as he would have with people at one of his comedy sets. There were a couple of troublesome people at my performance (and I knew they were going to be trouble as soon as I laid eyes on them) and he had them handled – until they got evicted during Sweet Transvestite (which is really quite early!) by the ushers (who were also really good at what must be a tough gig).
I had a couple of understudies performing on my night in Sheffield – which was actually pretty cool, as I’ve seen Haley Flaherty as Janet before, so that made another point of difference from previous visits. And bother the understudies – Lucy Aston as Janet, and Nathan Zach Johnson as Riff Raff (another role I’ve only ever seen played by one person in the tour) – were really good and you wouldn’t have known they weren’t performing their regular track if you hadn’t seen the notice in the foyer.
Like I said further up, I don’t know how this will hit if you’re not familiar with the source material and also that this has an atypical theatre audience, so it’s a strange one to recommend in a way. I wouldn’t take my mum to see it for example and it’s definitely not a show for people who only do Serious Theatre. But if you’re a fan of the film then it’s great – and I think if you like the back and forth you can get with live comedy then it might be a nice thing to try. it’s a short show – only two hours including an interval – so if it’s not for you it’s over fast. What I would say though is that if you are going for the first time and are a bit nervous or feel intimdated, I would pick a weeknight performance over the Friday and Saturday evening ones, because I think they’re less likely to be as full of people in costumes. I was there on a Tuesday night, on my own, not in costume and I was absolutely fine. Aside from the two (evicted) trouble makers, it was a lovely friendly audience.
And I mentioned at the top that it’s on Broadway at the moment – complete with Luke Evans as Frank. This a new staging – nothing like the UK tour – it’s got a gender flipped Riff Raff and all sorts of stars in the cast. Here’s a bonus video from their Instagram:
Have a great Sunday everyone!
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