Rocky Horror Review

Now, I am crap at remembering names so this could be interesting. Basically, from what I remember (and double checked online just now), Janet was played by Diana Vickers who was once on X Factor, Ben Freeman was Brad and he used to be on Emmerdale (but also does musical theatre like Wicked), Frank was played by a guy who was once on The Voice and he’s called Liam Tamne and the comedian Steve Punt (radio 4, works with Hugh Dennis) was the narrator. Oh yes, and Paul Cattermole from S Club 7 was Eddie/Dr Scott. The rest of the cast were theatre actors and put in amazing performances. I saw the show at the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton.

The staging was certainly the best I’ve seen as I have seen this show live three times. It worked better for its simplicity. Parts of the set rotate within a frame to present the illusion of different rooms within the castle.

Keeping the cast numbers low also helped. There were only four phantoms and this meant they added to the show and the stage didn’t feel crowded or overwhelming.

The costumes were spectacular, especially when it comes to the floor show and the encore. The costumes for the encore were all bright red, the colour of those famous Rocky Horror lips.

There were some notable changes to the performances. I had never seen Frank played with an American accent but actually I liked it. The whole point is that they are aliens trying to blend in and, having landed in America, they have taken on the local accent. Most performances seem to try to do a Tim Curry impression. Now, Curry was the original Frank and will always be the best. You can’t copy Curry’s performance so I was thrilled to see Tamne make it his own that way.

Another change was to have a dark haired Rocky so of course the line in Sweet Transvestite had to change from ‘blond hair and a tan’ to ‘dark hair and a tan’, which threw some of the audience off. I have to say that it didn’t bother me all that much as the performance of Rocky was so strong.

Punt really knew how to make the narrator role work with the audience by leaving pauses in the right places to allow people to shout out and providing innocent and witty come backs to the banter. At the same time he knew when enough was enough and commanded a certain level of control by speeding up his delivery at times to prevent the shouting out from taking over and becoming monotonous. His performance was a lot of fun though.

On the technical side the sets were moved seamlessly, the costumes (as mentioned) were amazing, the live band were flawless and the lighting and sound excellent. There was an apology for a delay due to a technical issue during the interval but the cast and crew were professional and the show went on shortly after without incident.

I’ve been watching the film of Rocky Horror ever since I was five (so for the last 24 years) and seen the live show as many times as I could so you could say I am a bit of a fan. That means I will either love a performance I see or hate it for not fitting what I love about the show. Last night I loved it. I loved Frank with an American accent (something I forgot to mention was that all the Transylvanians spoke with American accents until they were alone and then they had Eastern European accents), I loved Rocky as a brunette too.

The whole show was so well done and such fun. Frank was ruder and cruder than ever before and I adored him. The standing ovation was well deserved at the end.

Until it next comes around, I’ll wait with antici…pation, to do the time warp again!