“The Rocky Horror Show,” opening tonight at Studio 54, is the latest in a quartet of campy Broadway musicals this month that seem as much acts of resistance against a retrogressively anti-queer world as an escape from it.* It is also an act of nostalgia for the many of us who, sometime over the past half century, experienced this playfully transgressive mashup of B-movie pastiche, glam rock concert and punk/porn party. It’s that very nostalgia that (perhaps unavoidably) undermines this second Broadway revival. The cast is stellar and the staging is inventive, but the production just doesn’t measure up to the original.
By the original, I don’t mean the first production on stage in London in 1973, or the first Broadway production of it in 1975. The original for me is the movie that was released that same year. “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” has got to be the only movie ever to offer a more thoroughly engaging experience of live theater than the stage musical on which it is based.
A brief history: The movie was released in September, 1975, about six months after the brief Broadway run, a faithful version of the musical in all its 1970s outrageousness: Newly engaged wholesome couple Brad and Janet get a flat tire on a dark stormy night, and knock on a castle in hopes of using their telephone (Recall that cell phones weren’t commercially available until 1983.) They are thus drawn into the dark doings of the literally seductive Dr. Frank-N-Furter, who declares himself in song a transvestite from the planet of Transsexual in the galaxy of Transylvania, surrounds himself with creepy and colorful eccentrics who do his bidding (until they don’t) and creates a muscular hunk who turns out to be the title character, although he mostly exists to be ogled and pawed.
The movie was initially a flop, but about a year later, the Waverly Theater in Greenwich Village started showing it at midnight; those showings started attracting an enthusiastic crowd, and that crowd…became the show.
They attended wearing the costumes of the characters, and bringing their own props, such as rice to throw during the wedding scene and water guns for the rain scene, and they eventually, collectively developed an alternative script. These were first ad libs, then ritual comments, shouted at the screen during proper moments: When Dr. Frank-N-Furter asks about his creation Rocky “Well, Brad and Janet, what do you think of him?” the audience shouted out “Lie through your teeth, Janet!” before on the screen Janet said “Well, I don’t like men with too many muscles.”
This audience interaction turned the movie into not just a cult favorite, but the longest-running movie in theatrical release. It’s still being shown in cinemas five decades later; there’s a showing at the Quad Cinema on West 13th Street this weekend.
It would be unrealistic to expect the same level of audience involvement for a production with live professional performers in a Broadway theater, and indeed such behavior is officially discouraged: There is a cordial but clear two-paragraph message on the show’s website that concludes: “Choose your call-outs carefully—as this is a Broadway musical, not a midnight showing of the film.” (It might be worth noting that not a single member of the audience at the performance I attended was wearing a costume, or even a wig or makeup, of any of the characters.)
But this history of audience involvement – not just interaction but parallel creation – is surely the main reason this show is still around. One can still enjoy “The Rocky Horror Show,” especially Richard O’Brien’s 15 songs, most of which are catchy. But its shock value has largely worn off (at least for the people who would be interested in attending), and, let’s be honest, without that, what is there? The plot is a jumble, the characters are with little exception deliberately shallow archetypes, the employment of horror movie and sci fi tropes is not especially clever or funny or spooky. The show’s message, to the extent that there is an explicit one, is pablum (“Don’t dream it. Be it,” which doesn’t resonate any more deeply because the Roundabout management has placed it in neon in the lobby.) “The Rocky Horror Show” is, above all, an excuse for a party – or, more precisely for me at Studio 54, the triggering of the memory of having enjoyed the audience-created party at a showing of Rocky Horror.
It helps that director Sam Pinkleton, Tony winner for helming “Oh, Mary,” tries to create an atmosphere of fun. The theater is strewn with Halloween-style decorations; and the staging is elaborately whimsical, most noticeably a chorus of large-sized silver-colored robots in one of the theater boxes.
The cast, many of them familiar faces, are nothing if not game.
Rachel Dratch is low-key in the role of the pompous narrator but somehow makes that work. Andrew Durand is far more animated as Brad than in his previous role on Broadway, which earned him a Tony nomination, that of the corpse in “Dead Outlaw.”
A shout-out to four of the cast members making their Broadway debuts: Luke Evans who has a great voice and does a credible job as Frank-N-Furter, Juliette Lewis as Magenta, Josh Rivera as Rocky, and standout Michaela Jaé Rodriguez as Columbia. She not only puts her all into the role of the lost, jilted lover, making her one of the few characters who seem to have a soul; she also puts the real-life trans into Transsexual, the planet that’s still spinning after half a century.
Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show
Studio 54 through July 19, 2026.
Running time: One hour and 50 minutes, including one intermission
Tickets: $82 – $339
Book, music and lyrics by Richard O’Brien
Directed by Sam Pinkleton
Choreography by Ani Taj, music supervision by Kris Kukul, set design by dots, costume design by David I. Reynoso, lighting design by Jane Cox, sound design by Brian Ronan, wig & hair design by Alberto “Albee” Alvarado and make-up design by Sterling Tull,
Cast: Rachel Dratch as Narrator, Luke Evans as Frank-N-Furter, Andrew Durand as Brad, Amber Gray as Riff Raff, Harvey Guillén as Eddie and Dr. Scott, Stephanie Hsu as Janet Weiss, Juliette Lewis as Magenta, Josh Rivera as Rocky, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez as Columbia, Renée Albulario, Anania, Boy Radio, Caleb Quezon, Andres Quintero, Larkin Reilly, Paul Soileau, and John Yi.
Photos by Joan Marcus
*The others are: “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” “Titanique,” and “Schmigadoon.”
