This may come as a surprise, given the musical is now more than 50 years old, but we’ve never actually seen the Rocky Horror Show. As such, we didn’t quite know what to expect from this production, which has opened at London’s Dominion Theatre this week, and which will tour the UK through to summer 2025. Turns out it’s actually really good fun – this trip to the theatre was one of the most riotous nights out we’ve had in a while.
We should caveat this by saying that the plot is absolutely wafer thin, but also that most people probably don’t come to this show for the story. In a nutshell, we meet couple Brad (Connor Carson) and Janet (Lauren Chia) – their car has a flat tire, so they pop into the nearest dwelling they can find to ask whether they can use a telephone and call for help. The castle they arrive at belongs to eccentric scientist Frank N Furter (Jason Donovan), who has been creating weird sexy creatures to play with and… well, that’s literally it. That’s the whole show.
Thankfully, it’s full of great tunes – even if you’ve never seen the stage show, or the film, you almost certainly know ‘The Time Warp’, and there are several other recognisable numbers throughout. The audience – many of whom have dutifully dressed up as characters from the musical, and have brought their own glow sticks to wave during the ballads – know all the words… and we don’t just mean to the songs, we mean the dialogue, too.
Seeing the Rocky Horror Show at the theatre is a unique experience – it’s not standard theatrical fare. Everyone is expected to dance and there is a huge amount of audience interaction throughout, with heckles ranging from sexual innuendo to genuinely funny jokes to some downright unhinged commentary.
It’s a show full of high-camp, high-energy performances. Both Connor Carson and Lauren Chia absolutely ham it up in the lead roles – which works perfectly – Jason Donovan can really belt a tune and Mawaan Rizwan is wonderful as the narrator, riffing off the crowd beautifully. We also have to give a shout out to Morgan Jackson as the titular Rocky, who looks completely unreal, and somehow manages to sing while casually dropping backflips and somersaults on stage.
We had a lot of fun with this production of the Rocky Horror Show – having not seen it before we can’t really comment on how it’s aged or how it compares to past productions. We imagine it probably feels less progressive than it used to: in a world where we now have a fair amount of queer representation on the West End, this show feels a bit like a nostalgic throwback, a reminder of how queer people used to be seen by a previous generation. Given it’s more than half a century old it does seem to have held up pretty well, though – well worth a visit if you’ve not seen it before and, judging by the audience reaction, a huge amount of fun for returning fans too.
GAY TIMES gives the Rocky Horror Show – 4/5
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