Spooky season is here, the best time of the year, and chief among its delights is “Rocky season.” Even as the once-mainstream Rocky Horror Picture Show shadow-cast culture has declined from ubiquity to a cult phenomenon, Pittsburgh has retained a live performance tradition based around the original stage show, The Rocky Horror Show. A quirk in the show’s licensing (which is typically only available in the United States) has led to a free-for-all of productions with no significant restrictions on geographic overlap. Pittsburgh quickly became a hub for Rocky Horror enthusiasts when a PMT-affiliated production in the early 2000s transferred to a series of small theatres and found locations in Westmoreland County. That initial production ran annually for over twenty years, splitting off gradually into a number of other companies producing the show annually as well. Most of these productions still carry drops of blood from the Ken Gargaro-era origin of the Pittsburgh Rocky scene; if there isn’t an old-time Rocky head in the cast, there’s at least someone who learned the show and its rhythms from someone who WAS there in the early days. We’ve had rock concert Rocky, Rocky in space, Dirty Disney Rocky, and plenty of Rocky productions that recreate the aesthetic of the famous movie version. What we haven’t had, until now, is a Rocky that does the only remaining unexpected thing: bring the show back to its roots with a traditionalist production.

Permit me to nerd out for a minute: the scholarly text Still the Beast is Feeding, an analysis of Rocky Horror’s evolution and transformation over the decades, recently released an updated fiftieth anniversary volume. Much of this book is dedicated to writer/composer Richard O’Brien and his collaborators and early cast members, who watched bemused but mostly helpless as the witty, kitschy and quaint show they had built ballooned into a wilder, bawdier free-for-all. As staged by clear Rocky aficionado Mark Fleischer, this production of The Rocky Horror Show comes extremely close to recreating what audiences circa 1973 London would have experienced. There are signifiers of proto-Rocky here that rarely pop up in contemporary productions (the “Hot Patootie”/”Touch-A-Touch Me” counterpoint; strong masc/femme mirroring between Frank and Rocky; Doctor Scott with an American accent), but even casual fans will notice the gentler, more emotionally rooted and sometimes downright melancholic tone of the piece.

Thumbnailing the plot would be frankly useless here, given how well the archetypal characters and storyline have become ingrained in pop culture. As our viewpoint characters Brad and Janet, Spencer Millay and Kat Harkins balance cuteness, depravity and trauma deftly. Millay gradually reveals a tender gentleness beneath his all-American know-it-all exterior, performing the teary-eyed country ballad “Once in a While” alone onstage devoid of any irony. Harkins, meanwhile, moves in the other direction as her physical comedy and vocal performance both grow bolder and raunchier, from sweet soprano to full belt. Tying these two characters together, and ultimately separating them, is Alexander E. Podolinski as Frank N. Furter. The rare Frank with a deeper voice than Tim Curry, Podolinski brings a swaggering, threatening masculinity to Frank which is balanced by his histrionic emotional outbursts… not to mention his Veronica Lake wig and full Old Hollywood beat. Mike Greer makes Rocky Horror a perfect foil, the inverse of Podolinski’s Frank: despite looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger mashed up with Ryan Gosling as Ken, Greer’s Rocky is gentle, childlike, at times a little preening and effeminate. They’re not just girl-husband and man-wife, they’re believably father and son. (It makes sense in context, trust me.)

The show’s most often-imitated characters are the trio of henchman, all of which Fleischer and company have taken back to their roots and deconstructed into their initial components. Connor McCanlus, late of Twelfth Night at the Public, brings a haughty, Hitchcockian sneer to the role of Riff Raff. Far from the grotesque alien rock star the role has become, McCanlus plays him believably as an ominous horror movie butler who just happens to sing and dance. Laura Frye is vampy and mysterious in full Theda Barra drag as Magenta, dropping the French maid costume and thick accent in favor of understated gothic weirdness. She also opens the show with a rousing rendition of “Science Fiction Double Feature” as the cinephile Usherette. As Columbia, Sam Carter balances the sassy, sexy and spunky character demanded by the musical numbers with the broken, traumatized teenager the script itself suggests. This being a back-to-basics production, Columbia gets the somewhat infamous “acid trip” monologue in Act 2; Carter navigates the distance between Columbia’s nervous breakdown and the intentionally hokey hippie patter that follows with aplomb, despite it being the sort of moment that was hard to play in 1973 and has only gotten harder. Bringing up the rear as the evening’s straight men (so to speak) are Dixie Surewood as the Narrator and Matthew Hydzik as Eddie and Dr Scott. Surewood, a veteran comedian and perennial Best Drag Queen in numerous Pittsburgh publications, plays the Narrator with a tight-lipped, austere seriousness. Though she affects no English accent, the overall impression is of British conservative womanhood’s two avatars, Margaret Thatcher and Dolores Umbridge. Hydzik’s Eddie leans towards an Eddie Cochran and Chris Isaak influence, though his fluid dancing and wild physicality recalls Jonathan Groff in Just in Time. His Dr. Scott is played so straight he comes out the other end and becomes funny again, with a Will Forte-esque ability to plainly state absurd mumbo-jumbo with intense sincerity. 

In keeping with the traditionalist leanings, this production returns to the original’s four-piece band lineup under Robert Neumeyer, though technological advances mean Neumeyer can play keyboard bass so sax player Sam Eisenreich does not have to double on bass guitar. The sound is bright, upbeat and sonically diverse despite the reduced pit. Noah Glaister‘s scenic design of a haunted laboratory unit set plays well and subtly with the video design by Natalie Rose Mabry. Derek St. Pierre and Travis Klinger have balanced both the expected and the more traditional in their costume and makeup designs respectively, Frank’s 1940s women’s picture heroine from hell aesthetic being the largest deviation from the popular iconography.  It’s a production that gives the frenzied, participatory audiences (of which I am a member) what they want and need, while also leaning harder into the neglected narrative elements of O’Brien’s book. This is, after all, a rather sad allegory of the fifties discovering the liberation of the sixties, then crash-landing in the nihlistic burnout of the seventies. Leaving the show, I heard one audience member remark to another, “I never realized Rocky Horror had a PLOT before!” 

Lastly, a word of caution: dress up, sing and shout along as much as you like, but this is a no-props-thrown production. Your participation is greatly encouraged, just as long as it does not physically break that fourth wall… but Rocky Horror himself may reach out and eat off your plate if you’re in the front row. Thrills and chills indeed.

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