Rocky Horror on Broadway

[CJ N2N]

Posted: 8/25/12 at 6:17pm

I just saw that the UK has ANOTHER tour of "The Rocky Horror Show" opening in December. Am I the only one wishing that we could get a production here in New York again? Or do you think it's too soon after the (not very good, in my opinion) 2000 revival?

I think a very small production in the same vein as the original 73 London production without all the changes that were added after the movie would be AMAZING Off-Broadway with the right people at the helm! And what does everyone think about the callbacks that people shout? I've never been to a live showing of either the play or the movie but I personally feel that they are out of place in live productions.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 8/25/12 at 6:19pm

I really hope this show never returns to New York, only because I'd be there for every performance and that gets quite expunsive.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 8/25/12 at 6:34pm

The last Broadway revival was awesome and the audience participation is part of the experience now. Like it or not, it wouldn't be Rocky Horror without it.

The last revival had the unfortunate events of September 11th screw with whatever momentum could have been being built, but I think they were already stunt casting it by that time anyway, so maybe the show would just be better suited for an off Broadway budget with lower running costs or maybe it will just never work in New York. Who knows?

[MissAnneThrop]

Posted: 8/25/12 at 6:44pm

Jordan, i second that. last time i really thought of having my mail just forwarded to the Circle in the Square.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 8/25/12 at 6:52pm

Well then maybe we knew each other at that time since the number of times I saw that show is close to triple digits.

[Owen22]

Posted: 8/25/12 at 7:08pm

I loved the whole vibe of the 2000 revival. The casting was so out there, so appropriately crazy, great choreography, an odd sense of danger..it was fantastic. If we see another Rocky I hope it would be done in the same vein, a completely modern retelling. With my boyfriend Oliver Chris as Frank.

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 8/25/12 at 7:48pm

I wish that I could have seen the 2000 revival. I love the design elements I've seen from it. If I remember right, they incorporated some appropriately alien details into Frank's wardrobe.

I also loved the idea of rotating celebrity narrators. Penn and Teller did a brief stint shortly after 9/11 to help boost sales, and it's weirdly touching whenever Penn speaks about it. P&T felt that it was important at that moment to do something totally, joyfully free and open and sexual. Partially as escapism, but also because everything Rocky Horror celebrates is so diametrically opposed to the beliefs of the people who crashed those planes.

[The Josh]

Posted: 8/25/12 at 10:06pm

I feel like Alan Cumming would make a great Frank. Is he too old now? Is Frank too similar to Emcee? Am I just crazy?

[amoni]

Posted: 8/25/12 at 10:21pm

Wait CJ N2N, you said "do you think it's too soon after the (not very good, in my opinion) 2000 revival?"

Then "I've never been to a live showing of either the play or the movie but I personally feel that they are out of place in live productions."


If you didn't see the 2000 revival, how could you possibly deem it "not very good"? Or if you're saying you saw a bootleg, again how can you judge a live audience participation performance based on an a bootleg? It's hardly the same experience.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 8/25/12 at 10:28pm

That "not very good" revival that you didn't see was amazing and life changing.

[tazber]

Posted: 8/25/12 at 10:31pm

It's what started me wearing fishnets and hosting pool orgies.

[rougeduck]

Posted: 8/25/12 at 10:48pm

I would love to see a production with a female frank...kinda like a crazy Lady Gaga gay icon. And Dr Scott could be a more withered Madonna.

Posted: 8/25/12 at 10:48pm

it was fun to hear The Raul yell every night and Joan Jett play geetar.

fun times.

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 8/25/12 at 10:56pm

I would also love to see a female Frank in a high-profile production. Amanda Palmer did a female Emcee in Cabaret at A.R.T.; I think that she would be BRILLIANT Frank. She has a wonderful voice and attitude for it.

Wasn't there supposed to be a revival, or rather an open-ended "shadow cast" production, at New World Stages?

[Broadway Bob*]

Posted: 8/25/12 at 11:05pm

I had the complete pleasure and joy of ushering the ROCKY HORROR revival for the two and a half months before its first closing night and got to attend that closing night party. I got to experience both Tom Hewitt and Terrence Mann's Frank-N-Furters as well as a lot of different sets of understudies and replacements. Unfortunately September 11th caused the show to shutter shortly afterwards and I had to leave NYC for a few months to survive. While I was away they reopened for 6 weeks with some big cast changes (Sebastien Bach, Liz Larsen, Kristin Lee Kelley) and the weekly rotating celeb narrators. I was beyond bummed to miss out on those six weeks. I still miss the show to this day, but had the honor of directing a production of ROCKY HORROR last year. It was the best theatrical experience of my life.

[darquegk]

Posted: 8/25/12 at 11:07pm

A female Frank would have to be VERY good and VERY "other" to make it work. Despite being from the planet Transsexual, Frank is a pretty clear transvestite- a man, and a dangerous, rapey man, in women's underwear.

The fact that he either seduces (with trickery and drugs) or outright rapes just about every character in the show is what gives the essential threat at the heart of the character. If your Frank is just a lovable queer icon, you've missed the inherent point of the character, and of the show's paradoxically self-contradictory sense of liberation and morality: Frank is utterly free and utterly at home in his sexuality and gender identity. He is also a psychopathic murderer and a sex criminal.

[CJ N2N]

Posted: 8/26/12 at 12:47am

Okay, okay I repent, I repent!
I suppose I should take another look and listen to the revival, seeing as that opinion was formed about 5 years ago when I was 10 and first getting into Rocky (in my mind at that time, nothing could compare to the film. I thought that until I heard the Roxy cast). I just feel that "Rocky"'s place is in smaller, non-flashy productions but I'll give some videos of it a chance. Come to think of it... I should LOVE the revival seeing as I love Daphne, Alice and Raul and Circle in the Square is one of my favorite Broadway houses...

As a side note, I find discussing the deeper character and lyrical meanings fascinating.

[CJ N2N]

Posted: 8/26/12 at 1:02am

OH MY GOD I TAKE BACK EVERYTHING I SAID ABOUT THE REVIVAL NOT BEING GOOD! "The Time Warp" was fantastic! I feel bad for missing it, but I don't think I would've could enjoyed it as much when I was 3 years old...

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 8/26/12 at 1:06am

Wait, so you said how horrible it was and you'd never even listened to a single song from it?

[somethingwicked]

Posted: 8/26/12 at 1:07am

I mean, if Amanda Palmer was Frank...

[CJ N2N]

Posted: 8/26/12 at 1:08am

No I listened to it a really really long time ago. I completely apologize, it's amazing.

[Overkill]

Posted: 8/26/12 at 3:09am

Scarywarhol, I also remember an announcement of a shadow cast at NWS... I wonder whatever happened to that.

A few years back, MTV bought the rights to remake the film, and were even writing new songs - without any involvement from Richard O'Brien - and the project had such bad backlash, it was shelved. The only reason I mention this, is because back then, as much as I hated everything I'd been hearing about the remake at that point, all I wanted was to see Robert Downey Jr. as Frank. I still think he could pull it off amazingly.

I really wish this would come back to Broadway or Off-Broadway. New World Stages would be a great place for it, really! But I'd want to see a production, not a shadow cast... It could also do well in a house like the Booth, for example.

[ACL2006]

Posted: 8/26/12 at 2:27pm

If anything, it should play a limited engagement from late-September through Thanksgiving. Any community theater or summer stock production always sells-out their "Rocky" shows around Halloween time in my area.

[Born in a Ditch]

Posted: 8/26/12 at 4:49pm

Daphne Rubin-Vega's Magenta is still such a highlight of a performance.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 8/26/12 at 5:03pm

A highlight of my life.

And that MTV version was supposed to have Marilyn Manson as Frank, right?