Still Rocking Still Thrusting

Still rocking, still thrusting pelvically…that’s the Rocky Horror Show, some 26 years on from its premier at the Theatre Upstairs of the Royal Court, London, on June 16, 1973.

The best musical of 1973 stunned audiences by bringing to the stage - in a musical – murder, cannibalism, rape, sodomy, fellatio, transvestism, cunnilingus, fetishism, incest, and a whole lot of weird science stuff, which still has audiences flocking.

Rocky was written by Cheltenham born Richard O’Brien, who wanted to see on stage in a musical the sort of things he liked (50s Rock and Roll, 50s comics, horror movies and pop art – and 50s science fiction) and which made sense to him for a rock musical. ‘not cowboys singing about the corn being as high as an elephant’s eye – why would a cowboy sing about an elephant’s eye?’ The other big shows at the time were Oklahoma and Jesus Christ Superstar. They were big stage musicals. They were expensive and glittering and A Night Out. Rocky, by contrast was tacky, sleezy, sexy and huge fun.

Set in Denton, which is a suburb of Manchester, England, and very loosely based on the story of Adam and Eve and the loss of innocence (well, think about it) the show has endured.

Said O’Brien about his creation ‘the show now has its own life. It has itself become a Frankenstein creature.’

‘I only knew three chords on the guitar when I wrote it (I only know about five now) and I played the guitar like a drum. The first song I wrote for it was Science Fiction Double Feature. I already had some, like I’m going home.

Most of the original cast knew each other already – Tim Curry was cast as Frank after he bumped into Richard O’Brien who was going into a gym near where he lived looking for a muscled Rocky. Since he was leaving the gym O’Brien first thought of him as Rocky, but he soon was cast as Frank.

‘I started doing Frank with a german accent …sort of ‘ve haf vays’ but the voice came right when I overhead a woman on a bus saying in cut glass ‘do you have a hice town or a hice in the cuuuuuntri’’.

‘I’m still hugely fond of Frank. No other part was as liberating. He has to be seen as powerful and dominant. Frank wants to have sex with everyone, and everyone wants to have sex with Frank – and can you blame them? He has so much charisma. It is one of the most extraordinary parts – though you have to keep Frank and yourself far apart. Frank is sexually very interesting, attractive to both male and female, so the actor playing him has to be masculine but also able to develop a feminine side. It just does not work if you play Frank camp or gay. (that was a fault with the film. In it Frank comes over as much more camp than I ever played him on stage) He has to have mystery and danger’. Still, with the film, ‘even though my agent did not want me to do it, I was buggered if anyone else was going to’

Another very successful Frank, Anthony Head, now star of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, commented on his time in fishnet ‘It is always hard to be Frank and not a Tim Curry clone. But, Frank is just so cool. Both men and women are attracted to him. Frank’s first entrance on stage used to excite me every night, it is the greatest entrance in theatre’

However, that entrance was nearly enough to scare Meatloaf out of the show forever

He reminisced about first rehearsals for the american stage version in LA that the new cast had had about a week together, run through some songs and roughed some scenes. ‘Suddenly the doors at the back of the theatre were flung open and in came Tiom Curry in full Frank costume, singing sweet transvestite. We looked around with open mouths. I thought what is this. I walked/ What in the world? Are you kidding? Then in the afternoon we got a full script, and I found out I had to wear fishnets and heels.(to double as Dr Scott) That went on to be ‘probably the greatest laugh I have ever had on stage, when Dr Scott shows his leg in fishnet and high heels’.

After a short but incredibly successful run in the tiny Theatre Upstairs (Mick Jagger was turned away one night, there just was no seat available for him), and to critical and popular acclaim, the show transferred first to an about to be demolished cinema, and then twice more. Its initial run was for 2,960 performances.

The story of how the American stage version and then the film came about is well known. Actress Britt Eklund saw the stage version several times and passed on the news to Lou Adler, American show-biz backer and producer. He took the stage show to America and then came the film.

Back in England, mostly on the old Hammer film lot at Bray, outside London, the film. With Americans Susan Sarandon and Barry Boswick brought in to appease 20th Century Fox the film was made in a remarkable six weeks on a total budget of £1,120,000. And, it shows. The film is full of all sorts of continuity errors which would not have happened on anything but the smallest and most hurried and harried production.

Once the film was made Fox had no idea what to do with their strange little effort. In cinemas in the States, it tended to die. Only a few people attended. Then one or two cinemas started showing it at midnight, and students started attending, over and over again. The same audience turned up night after night, they started to dress up and they started to talk back.

They still do. Strangely, the film is more popular in America to this day, stage versions tend not to do as well, while in the UK, and to some extent in Australia and other countries round the world the stage versions are immensely popular, more so than the film. It tends to be kept fairly quiet, but the film has out-grossed Gone with the Wind..

Nicolas Parsons, lately the narrator on the London stage, thought that this was to do with our heritage ‘ of Elizabethan Shakespeare, where audiences stood in the pit and shouted at the actors, and of pantomime. With Rocky the audience know the script as well as the cast do’

Rocky is due back on stage in Hanley, Stoke on Trent in September (details 01782 2138000) and the Third UK Transylvanian convention will be in Woking, Surrey, on October 30, this year.

Links: http://www.Transylvania.org.uk

http://www.Timewarp.org.uk