A Stratford twist with a touch of nostalgia
The Rocky Horror Show
(out of 4) Book, music and lyrics by Richard O’Brien. Directed and choreographed by Donna Feore. Until Oct. 31 at the Avon Theatre, 99 Downie St., Stratford. stratfordfestival.ca or 1-800-567-1600
This production of The Rocky Horror
Picture Show represents yet another improbable landmark in the twisted history of this famous title.
What started in the 1970s as the pet project of the English actor Richard O’Brien became a surprise hit stage musical and cult classic film. The movie developed its own live performance following in the form of midnight screenings with fans lip-synching the dialogue and the audience heckling and throwing objects at the screen.
The stage musical has become a favourite of amateur and semi-pro companies around the world, including in Canada.
And now, it’s being produced by the country’s bastion of establishment theatrical prestige, the Stratford Festival, complete with a program note that reassures newbies not to “get too strung out” by the way their fellow audience members might dress or behave (but also scolding those tempted to throw things).
The familiarity of Rocky Horror is what now defines it, and that’s something any production must contend with. The original musical was driven by O’Brien’s nostalgia for mid-20th-century sci-fi, Hammer horror, and bodybuilder movies (the latter full of homoerotic subtext), all delivered through the genderambiguous aesthetic of glam rock. Many gen-Xers and younger boomers fondly remember sharpening their teenage edge by participating in the movie’s rituals (I found I know nearly all the lyrics by heart).
Director/choreographer Donna Feore’s production plays directly into this layered nostalgia, which makes for an entertaining evening (with a lot more f-bombs and double entendre than we’re used to at Stratford) but one that sidesteps real engagement with the material’s queer sensibility.
Feore’s production brings top-notch musical theatre talent to the plate. The movie’s not necessarily remembered for its musical excellence, but every member of the cast here is a great singer (though at times it feels like they’re competing with Laura Burton’s orchestra). Feore further signs the performance with sexy choreography performed by a pleasingly androgynous six-person chorus dressed in tight black leather with conveniently located gaps exposing washboard abs.
And speaking of ripped, Canadian musical theatre icon Dan Chameroy gives us a Dr. Frank N. Furter straight out of the weight room: the initial sight of him with his shoulders and biceps bulging above the iconic reverse garter rather takes the breath away.
Like his fellow cast members, Chameroy looks amazing in Dana Osborne’s costumes, and his vocal performance in the signature numbers “Sweet Transvestite” and “I Can Make You a Man” is superb.
But there’s a limitation to Chameroy’s performance that also speaks to my concerns about the production overall: he plays Frank N. Furter with ironic distance, when it’s the character’s deranged conviction – and exceptional powers of seduction – that define him.
He embraces Frank’s butch qualities at the expense of the femme, not yet strutting confidently in his high heels and fishnets.
By contrast, Robert Markus as Riff Raff (the character originally played by creator O’Brien), Erica Peck as Magenta and Kimberly-Ann Truong as Columbia come across as demonically committed, and that’s what makes the show funny – because the material is so ludicrously implausible.
Their foils are the naive hero and heroine Brad and Janet, who chance on Frank N. Furter’s castle when their car breaks down. Feore and actor Jennifer Rider-Shaw are attempting some post-feminist revision to Janet as a dumbblond stereotype. She’s less interested in Sayer Roberts’s Brad than on the big rock he puts on her finger, and the couple don’t really spark sexually. This makes sense of them being drawn into Frank’s seductive web. His world unlocks taboo pleasures that their cookie-cutter heterosexual lives don’t provide.
George Krissa had his work cut out in topping the physical perfection already on display as Frank’s mad-science creation Rocky but really does look like some kind of god in his teeny gold lamé trunks and blond wig, and plays the character’s dopiness plausibly. Trevor Patt camps it up appropriately as both the half-dead rocker Eddie (played by Meatloaf in the film) and closet Nazi Dr. Scott.
The red velvet setting of the Avon Theatre suits the material in that it feels a lot like an oldtime movie house, underlined by having Peck sing the opening number “Science Fiction” in the guise of a ‘50s usherette – a welcoming introduction, but less unsettling than the delivery of this song in the film by a disembodied mouth.
While the production is less lavish than one might have expected (it’s with Feore’s production of The Music Man over in the Festival Theatre that Stratford is pulling out all the musical theatre stops this season), the design team create a physical environment full of kitschy visual pleasures.
The scene in which Riff Raff, Magenta and Frank’s true iden- tities are revealed is appropriately orgasmic. Osborne outdoes herself with chrome space warrior costumes, set designer Michael Gianfrancesco and lighting designer Michael Walton crank up the pink neon, and the back wall of the theatre blasts open (or projection designer Jamie Nesbitt makes it look that way).
Steve Ross, bookending a season of great comic performances (he’s also The Music Man’s long-suffering mayor), plays the Narrator, who pops on and off stage to tell the story and endure the audience’s abuse – booing him is a beloved fan convention.
On opening night the heckling came thick and fast, some of it presumably coming from audience plants but some seemingly also off the cuff (and so filthy!). Seeing Ross (and at points, Chameroy) process the hit and send it back out in the form of a raised eyebrow or middle finger brought some of the purest entertainment, a sense of the live and spontaneous in an environment of licensed, framed and not-very-transgressive transgression from Transsexual Transylvania.