‘Rocky’ It’s a month on several Bay Area stages
Richard O’Brien’s iconic campy horror show gets three stagings
San Francisco loves “The Rocky Horror Show.” The story of space alien/transvestite/mad scientist Frank-N-Furter and the uptight young couple who stumble unsuspecting into his creepy castle of sexy horrors has become a perennial favorite with local audiences.
Richard O’Brien’s campy 1973 rock ’n’ roll stage tribute to old horror movies had its first post-Broadway U.S. production in San Francisco in 1976. The 1975 movie version, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” became the definition of a cult classic. Live shadow casts were soon lip-syncing in front of the screen in long-running weekly midnight showings at Berkeley’s UC Theatre and S.F.’s Strand Theater (now part of American Conservatory Theater).
The stage musical has long been a staple of small theaters, and now more professional theaters are getting into the act. San Jose Stage Company just opened its season with “Rocky,” and in April ACT will be producing a large-scale production directed by Broadway choreographer Sam Pinkleton.
“I want to put the horror back in ‘Rocky Horror,’ ” says Allison F. Rich, who directs the San Jose Stage production and plays the maid Magenta. “I mean, the piece is inherently campy. You don’t have to do a whole lot to make it campy. I’m trying really hard to bring it back to the source material on which it’s based, those old sci-fi and horror B-movies, in terms of style and storytelling.”
Ray of Light Theatre has performed it at San Francisco’s Victoria Theatre in October for the last five years, with drag luminary D’Arcy Drollinger in the starring role, though this year’s production is the company’s fond farewell to the show. Up-and-coming North Bay troupe Marin Musical Theatre Company is also performing it this October.
For many, “Rocky” was a seminal influence early on.
“‘Rocky Horror’ was the very first play I ever did,” Rich says. “I was a freshman in college, and I did it at a community theater in Chico. It was the show that ignited my passion for theater.”
“Funnily enough, I didn’t do musical theater when I was growing up,” says Ray of Light artistic director Jason Hoover. “But in college all my friends were auditioning for ‘Rocky Horror,’ so I auditioned for it and ended up getting cast. That was kind of my indoctrination. This will be the eighth time I’ve been involved in the show. The energy that you find with the Ray of Light audience right as those first three chords hit, right before Frank-NFurter comes in — it’s not something that I’ve been able to replicate or experience in any other venue with any other show.”
“Rocky” traditionally involves a lot of audience participation. The midnight movie crowd has developed a liturgy of “callbacks” to the show’s lines and lyrics, and the routines include throwing certain things at certain times.
“You get to be a little rowdy inside of a cinema,” says Nate Havoc of Barely Legal, a shadow cast that started in 1995 at the UC Theatre and still performs at the Albany Twin, San Jose’s 3Below and other venues. “It’s not something you’re just sitting and watching passively.”
Different productions have different strategies for the interactive element, varying from just leaving it up to audiences to selling participating kits and cheat sheets before the show. Note, though, that many venues have strict rules about throwing things.
“I hope that people get into this, because Marin is usually such a tame location,” says MMTC artistic director Jenny Boynton, who’s directing “Rocky Horror” and plays damsel in distress Janet. “We are encouraging people to dress up, and we just want our usually tame audiences to yell profanities at us.”
“Obviously we’re having much more nuanced discussions about gender, and this is definitely a show that was written in the late ’70s and doesn’t get some of that, or it gets it in its limited, two-generations-back way,” says ACT artistic director Pam MacKinnon. “And as a selfidentified straight woman, I’m not interested in 700 people a night yelling, ‘Janet, you slut!’ But what can they yell? Or how can they yell that with it being celebratory as opposed to a condemnation?”
For “Rocky” fans, it’s all celebratory. Even — or maybe especially — all the profanity.
“This show celebrates sexual freedom and exploration and comfort in an overt and really raunchy way,” Boynton says. “Everyone in our production told us what they’re comfortable with, and we went for it. We have made it as adult as it could possibly be. I see it as a celebration of life and a celebration of sexuality and a celebration of being yourself.”
“It really does speak to the empowerment of self-creation,” Rich agrees, “and being and becoming who you really truly are, despite societal norms.”