A Time-Less Warp

Image: 2023 Australian cast of The Rocky Horror Show. Photographer: Daniel Boud.

No wonder she is excited by the 50^th birthday production - Stage Whispers’ Coral Drouyn has seen The Rocky Horror Show (and Picture Show) more than 30 times with eight different Franks.

“I remember doing the Time Warp.”

YES, I do, quite literally. The first time was only in my head. The year was 1974 and I hadn’t yet turned 30 but I had two kids and was writing directing and appearing at my own theatre restaurant five nights a week. But a couple of days break in Sydney and getting a night out at a dump (perfect venue) like the New Arts Cinema (which became the Valhalla) - a tacky cinema … tacky in a way that the carpet stuck to your shoes - was a veritable treat.

After all, it was Jim Sharman and Reg Livermore, and if the show was a little weird, and there were no Rodgers and Hammerstein type songs … well, you can’t have everything.

We had only heard whispers about The Rocky Horror Show itself. It was apparently a send-up of all the schlock B Grade Sci-Fi horror movies, and it was very CAMP…. a hugely popular word at the time.

Image: The Rocky Horror Show Australia 2023 - Stellar Perry – Photographer: Daniel Boud.

I had known Reg in a minor capacity for about 10 years. We had both auditioned for the film The Delinquents (Kylie ended up playing my role years later) and Reg had done Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad at the Independent Theatre (North Sydney) where my then hubby was stage manager.

We watched Reg’s rise through Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar (both directed by Jim Sharman) and wondered where he could possibly go next. Reg was different - we knew that; and I am not talking about his sexuality. He was a STAR even before he was a star. He only had to walk on stage and look at the audience and you felt he was saying, “Who are you? This is MY domain, you owe me rent and it will cost you shitloads to worship me.”

Off stage Reg was quiet, almost shy, but hit him with a pink or amber spot and this other creature would emerge - bigger than anything you could ever imagine - scary but delicious, an honest to God Superstar.

I think I sat open-mouthed through three quarters of Rocky Horror as Reg trissed and trounced, stomped and sashayed, in ridiculously high platform heels, alternately scaring us into submission and almost killing us with hysterical laughter.

Image: Reg Livermore.

Hard to believe, but only a small clique knew in those days that a transvestite could be a heterosexual cross-dresser, or a drag queen, or pretty much anything in between. Coming out of the ‘60s into the ‘70s, Gender Diversity, in all its forms, was as impossible to understand as Quantum Physics. To say The Rocky Horror Show was confronting is like saying Ice-cream is cold. Well, yeah - what did you expect?

Reg has said, and I quote, “Frank is the fearless embodiment of all that’s unspeakable.”

The reason was of course, that Reg and Jim created him that way. Depraved and irredeemable, yet also irresistible. I had to go back twice more before I believed what I was seeing, and by that time I knew the ‘Time Warp’ lyrics and sang along – silently.

The following year the show opened in Melbourne with one of our best and most diverse actors, Max Phipps. He was a less scary Frank, not so confronting, but still like nothing we could relate to. I must have seen him at least once a fortnight for the entire run. He was brilliant.

Trevor Kent took over from Reg in Sydney and really relished getting inside what made Frank tick. He was a classically trained actor who created for himself an entire Universe where Frank was emperor. Trevor was so great that later, when I had the pleasure of working with him in Prisoner, I called his character Frank.

By the time the movie was made, with Tim Curry reprising his London role, and Frank being super attractive instead of compellingly grotesque, the show had run its course here (temporarily). But it had been a huge success for a little cult show which opened to just 63 people in a derelict building.

The movie was a cult hit, after a slow start. And I remember it was the midnight show at the Valhalla in Richmond on a Friday or Saturday night and the kids from the casts of the major shows in town would all front up.  

We would all go dressed as the characters and there were true fanatics on stage in front of the screen (not pros, but civilians who actually believed they were the characters). This time we all stood and did the Time Warp. At worst, half the audience was stoned and the other half inebriated, but the scene was anarchy fraught with innocence to counteract the depravity (very little) on screen.

So how did a cult musical become mainstream theatre over the next decade? Did the show change, or did the audience? Or perhaps the whole world changed and has never stopped since.

“It’s just a jump to the left, and then a step to the right …”

That’s all it really took.

The world, and Australia in particular, took a huge jump to the left. Instead of a somewhat rigid PM, we had a Ridgey-didge all drinking, all swearing, all womanising leader in Bob Hawke (and Britain had Tony Blair).

Australia was finding its own identity with a more “Live and Let Live’ approach to life. State by state homosexuality was decriminalised and we were beginning to understand gender diversity as well as sexuality.

Frank N Furter was now not the only bi-sexual person we had ever heard of. Rocky Horror wasn’t so shocking anymore. It was a new world in which we were encouraged to believe anything was possible.

Image: The Rocky Horror Show Australia 2023 - Jason Donovan – Photographer: Daniel Boud.

Then Sci-Fi in general took a step to the right. No longer schlock horror movies - new filming technology gave us thought provoking films about what was out there, and we were no longer afraid of it. Star Wars changed our way of thinking about Sci Fi movies. They were now respectable and even award winning, part of the mainstream.

The Rocky Horror Show took that same step to the right, and stopped being about fine actors of a certain persuasion. Daniel Abineri, a film actor and singer with a large fan base, gave a very respectable impersonation of Tim Curry’s Frank across several productions. Then there was an Elvis Impersonator, Joe Daniels - super macho but sang up a storm, Adam Rennie, who played quite safe, and then (counterculture forbids  even saying  his name these days) a soap and recording star, Craig McLachlan, at age 28, grabbed the role of Frank and took it to places that out-burlesqued burlesque.

Audiences who came to see a singing soap star left as die-hard Rocky fans, and a whole new audience was converted to live theatre. This time they were large mainstream theatres, necessary to pay the salaries of household names and stars in the lead role, and that was to be the future of the show.

But it was a different soap star who put his own stamp next on the role.

There were some raised eyebrows in 1998 when it was announced that Jason Donovan would be Frank for the 25^th Anniversary production. Jason had been a beloved character in Neighbours, reached superstar status on two continents, sold millions of records and was a household name. He was also the epitome of squeaky clean, boy-next-door goodness. Now he was adding depravity to his repertoire.

What people forgot was that Jason is part of an acting family. He knows his stuff, and he always has. He was just a victim of type casting – the downside of being seen as a “Pretty Boy” when you are actually a serious artist.

It was a turning point in his career, and he nailed it. Though Frank isn’t a paradigm for a serious role, it does best with a serious actor. And Jason Donovan knows his craft and is so good he can make a role whatever he chooses. That’s why he’s able to go from slipping off his Technicolour Dreamcoat to donning tights and a corset in the blink of an eye.

Image: The Rocky Horror Show Australia 2023 - Jason Donovan and Henry Rollo – Photographer: Daniel Boud.

Now he’s back to celebrate the 50^th Anniversary of perhaps the most spectacular anomaly in the history of theatre. It’s not schlock anymore…it’s pure (but sleazy) entertainment that no-one should ever be offended by. In 50 years, it has played to 30 million people in thirty countries and been performed in 20 different languages.

With a stellar cast of local talent including Spicks and Specks’ Myf Warhurst as the narrator - the show has already played in Sydney and Adelaide, opening in Melbourne in May. The world keeps changing, and so does The Rocky Horror Show. The world has caught up to Richard O’Brien’s strange but much-loved vision. We who love it are older too.

It’s 25 years since JD last donned the tights and platform shoes. I wonder if he has a sense of Déjà Vu or if this is a whole new experience? There’s only one way to find out.

“Let’s do the Time Warp again.”