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The Rocky Horror Show |
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Author: Richard O'Brien
Reviewer: David Roberts for Theatre Reviews Limited |
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From the moment the audience enters the Circle in the Square theatre to see "The Rocky Horror Show" its members are aware that they are in for an experience quite unlike any other Broadway experience past or present. And that awareness is both comforting and awe-inspiring.
  
This production of Richard O'Brien's "The Rocky Horror Show" is indeed full of wonder and touches the human spirit in magical and often unanticipated ways. The show's songs, still fresh and powerful after twenty-five years, can easily stir both memory and longing and, without as much as a warning, can elicit irrepressible joy as well as an awareness of a time gone by that is probably not recoverable except through memories from the past or visions of some future whose dimension is circumscribed only by the framework of fantasy.
At heart, "The Rocky Horror Show" is a journey of spirit and "is about" everything imaginable as much as it "is about" nothing at all. At times the musical seems to transport the audience to that wonderful time of "late-night double-feature picture shows" when one could imagine oneself Steve Reeves or Faye Wray. The next moment one is confronted with images of humanity's cruelty, mistrust and destructiveness.
Almost always, the moment the audience thinks they have "captured" the meaning of "The Rocky Horror Show," the show's creator Richard O'Brien provides another time and space warp and heads off in some other direction. What the show has always managed to create, and what this particular production creates better than any other, is a vehicle for self-exploration, self-understanding, and self-acceptance, all of which makes possible the acceptance of the other with non-judgmental and unconditional love.
Indeed everything about this "Rocky Horror" is perfect. The cast could not be better and the show could not be the same without the cast exactly as it is. There has been no better Janet Weiss than Alice Ripley, no finer Brad Majors than Jarrod Emick. Magenta and Columbia (and the Usherettes) find wonderfully new dimensions in the capable hands of Daphne Rubin-Vega and Joan Jett. Tom Hewitt creates a Frank 'N' Furter with delightful passion and sensuality and Sebastian LaCause's Rocky is the perfect little boy "monster" wrapped in a body to live and die for. And Lea Delaria's Dr. Scott is as existentially scary as her "Eddie" is jilted biker boyfriend turned vindictive bad boy.
Richard O'Brien would probably agree that "his" role (Riff Raff) has been entrusted to a very capable actor. From the moment Raul Esparza steps onto the stage the audience knows his character is a host with more than a few secrets tucked away and asking his Riff Raff to use the phone is akin to asking Senator Orrin Hatch for directions to a gay-friendly restaurant.
Serving as our alter egos, the Phantoms (as Greek Chorus as a chorus in this show could get) feel for us, sing for us, touch and are touched for us, experience unremembered joy and all-too-familiar sorrow. Kevin Cahoon, Deidre Goodwin, Aiko Nakasone, Mark Price, Jonathan Sharp, and James Stovall are, as an ensemble, the best psychotherapy one could hope for and persistently and successfully pique both our dulled senses and our often too repressed sensuality.
And then there's the Narrator. Dick Cavett (yes, with neck) is over the top on target in this role. Whether by his choice or that of the creative team, he plays the Narrator in the very real present and fearlessly engages the audience in dialogue. Whether he's telling an unruly audience member he'll "bitch slap her out to the curb" or dutifully reading the Narrator's book from his "perch" Mr. Cavett is everything the Narrator needs to be and more. He manages to tame the Rocky Regulars (some of whom have seen the movie version hundreds of times) and seduce them into actually watching the show and listening to the dialog.
By the second act the audience has forgotten everything they ever knew about "The Rocky Horror Show" and have been transported with Brad, Janet and the rest of the Transylvanian tribe to the place we all need to be: at that pivotal place somewhere between fantasy and reality where dreams are dreamed and hopes collide with fear and we emerge, rose-tinted for a precious couple of hours, somehow ready "to go home" and prepared not just to "dream it" but finally, bravely to "see" whatever it is that's been out there (or in there) waiting - just for us -- to be discovered.
Reviewed on Sunday, November 26, 2000
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Produced by Jordan Roth by arrangement with Christopher Malcolm, Howard Panter, and Richard O'Brien.
Theater: Circle in the Square, 1633 Broadway (Actually, on 50th Street, between Broadway & 8th Avenue)
Schedule: Tuesday - Friday at 8, Saturday at 5 & 9:45, Sunday at 2 and 7.
Tickets: $30 - $85.00 (effective April 3).
Audience: Pre-adolescent and up will want to go. Contains overt sexuality.
Visit "The Rocky Horror Show" Web Site at www.rockyhorrorlive.com
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