They\u2019re coming for the \u201cTime Warp\u201d \u2014 but getting a scolding.<\/p>\n
Audiences for the Broadway revival of \u201cThe Rocky Horror Show\u201d are being confronted with buzz-killing warnings<\/a> against shouting out the hilarious call-backs and tossing around the iconic props that are the main reasons for the rollicking musical\u2019s enduring popularity.<\/p>\n No more throwing toast when the actors raise their glasses to propose one.<\/p>\n Tossing rice during the wedding scene is verboten.<\/p>\n Forget jumping to the left and stepping to the right.<\/p>\n Dancing the \u201cTime Warp\u201d in the aisles is in the rear view.<\/p>\n Better leave your Riff Raff and Magenta costumes at home.<\/p>\n No more fun.<\/p>\n Self-serious management at Studio 54, where the show is being staged, are bleeding the joy out of a theater experience that energized legions of misfits, freaks and suburban wannabes.<\/p>\n All of us flocked to midnight screenings<\/a> of the movie spinoff, as well as to live theater productions from here to London, to indulge in a subversive taste of raunch and rock \u2018n\u2019 roll.<\/p>\n I, for one, grew up subwaying it from Queens to Greenwich Village or the Upper West Side armed with the trinkets and memorizing the shout-out lines that made \u201cThe Rocky Horror Picture Show\u201d a touchstone of my generation and the ones to follow.<\/p>\n On a visit to London, I was pleased to see the tradition had spread from New York City back to a live-action theater across the pond, where it all began.<\/p>\n But now bossy signs, utterly antithetical to the rebellious \u201cRocky Horror\u201d spirit, greet fans in place of audience-participation kits containing such items as toilet paper, playing cards and rubber gloves they can loudly snap.<\/p>\n The missives warn theatergoers to shut up rather than honor the tradition of spouting gleefully at the actors.<\/p>\n And a new section on the production\u2019s website lectures attendees to \u201cchoose your call-outs carefully \u2014 as this is a Broadway musical, not a midnight showing of the film.\u201d<\/p>\n Yes, we know: We\u2019ve paid up to $430 per ticket for the privilege.<\/p>\n Most dishearteningly, the show\u2019s director, Sam Pinkleton, gave the New York Times vague guidelines on the formerly free-flowing ways one is permitted to enjoy the spectacle.<\/p>\n He said hurling call-backs can be done \u201conce in a while.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019re talking about calling the character Brad Majors an \u201ca-hole, and yelling out that Janet Weiss is a \u201cslut.\u201d<\/p>\n Just do it occasionally, though.<\/p>\n Once a performance? Twice? Not clear.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Cast members, too, seem eager to disparage the ethos that makes this revival possible.<\/p>\n Rowdy \u201chard-core\u201d fans \u201cjust sound nasty and heckling,\u201d sniffed Luke Evans, the production\u2019s Dr. Frank-N-Furter.<\/p>\n It\u2019s instructive to remember that \u201cThe Rocky Horror Show\u201d began as a successful live show in London back in 1973.<\/p>\n Two years later, the film version \u2014 titled \u201cThe Rocky Horror Picture Show\u201d and starring Englishmen Tim Curry and creator Richard O\u2019Brien, plus Americans Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick and Meat Loaf \u2014 was initially a flop<\/a>.<\/p>\n But then it caught on in the midnight circuit, and audience participation was essential to its re-emergence as a cultural phenomenon.<\/p>\n It was a raucous good time, a shared communal experience.<\/p>\n No longer, it appears.<\/p>\n Have we, as a society, become opposed to all expressions of humor and kink?<\/p>\n