"The Rocky Horror Show". New Theatre

The Rocky Horror Show is a musical about an alien creature from the planet Transsexual, who tries to fit in on planet Earth while being true to their own sexuality. Ultimately they are destroyed. Heteronormativity triumphs, but it's a hollow victory, as the one character who brought vivacity, imagination and pure raunch to their party of unconventional conventionalists has paid the ultimate price. It’s a tribute to trans rights. The show is over half a century old. Have we learnt nothing in those years? Supreme Court, take note.

Audiences in the early 1970s were the young, the rebellious and the open-minded. To them, Frank N. Furter's hedonistic philosophy, 'Give Yourself Over To Absolute Pleasure', was a doorway that opened into gardens of delight and heightened awareness. I'm not sure it has the same resonance in 2025. The audience at the New Theatre were middle-aged cosplayers out for a singalong. The absolute pleasure they came for was to see an old nostalgic favourite, and the vast majority left fully satisfied.

But in truth Christopher Luscombe's production is a bit thin. It gives itself over to compromised pleasure. Workmanlike and slick, it doesn’t have the edgy, transgressive danger-camp of Richard O’Brien’s original show, or that of many subsequent iterations. Rocky Horror is fuelled by a nerdish love of 50s sci-fi B-movies and Universal Horror of the 30s. But in Luscombe’s current version it feels like those old movie references are lost on the performers themselves. They sing about Michael Rennie, Claude Rains and Leo G. Carroll, but it doesn’t feel as though they have a clue who those people were. The result? A show full of feelgood numbers sung and danced competently by a company of well-trained musical theatre pros. But no heart, no threat, and no sense of being admitted, like Brad and Janet, to a world they find both terrifying and irresistible.

There is still plenty to enjoy. Hey, this is Rocky Horror after all. The Time Warp is a timeless banger that has the audience on its feet in microseconds. And the bed-based seduction scene, with Frank deflowering both our virginal principals in turn, is an unexpected excursion into risqué rogering, with cunnilingus, fellatio, masturbation, vaginal and anal sex all in quick succession. But the star of this show is Jackie Clune as the narrator. She ad libs hilariously with the audience as they yell out the traditional (and some new) responses. Like Sandi Toksvig with a potty mouth, she makes constant schoolmarmly references to her apparently aging genitals, as well as several withering remarks about Donald Trump. Clune succeeds in doing what every production should try to do: she reinvents the material and makes it her own. Charles Gray himself would have been impressed.

Sadly, Adam Strong, in the key starring role of Frank N. Furter, is (quite literally) the stumbling block in this show. It might be asking too much to expect anyone, ever, to exceed or even match Tim Curry who, in both the original stage production and the 1975 film, positively fizzed with sexual chemistry. But Strong doesn’t even come close. Where Curry strutted like a catwalk model, Strong staggers like an overweight builder in high heels. Where Curry winked at the audience, Strong sighs. Where Curry employed an outrageously over-the-top posh British accent (‘let me show you arigned, maybe play you a signed’), Strong’s voice isn’t sure where it comes from. His accent is as fluid as his gender. Sometimes he sounds like he’s from Windsor, but on the whole he settles for stage American. He has a strong enough singing voice, but most of time he just looks tired.

Frank’s first appearance is a crucial moment in the show: concealed in a cloak for the first few lines of Sweet Transvestite, he then bursts out in full, rippling musculature, clad in black panties and a corset, grinding like a cement mixer on viagra. Strong’s physical presence simply can’t do it justice. He walks with a stoop, and the corset looks more like a surgical truss than a piece of lingerie. Frank was created to be a charismatic crystallisation of the icons of glam rock. He’s Marc Bolan, Freddie Mercury, David Bowie and Gene Simmons rolled into one: men whose onstage image of fay innocence went hand-in-hand with libidos that hadn’t been controlled. Nowadays the role would be (and frequently is) brilliantly done by a drag queen like Daya Betty.

There are other depressing aspects to the show. The set, like the production itself, is clean and toy-like, not dirty and deranged. The blood on Frank N. Furter’s surgical gown, after he has eviscerated failed experiment Eddie with a chainsaw, looks like a solid splodge of paint, not a crazy spattering of blood. Dr Scott (Edward Bullingham) bizarrely attempts a German accent only on the word ‘und’, and reverts (like Strong) to standard American for the rest of the time. Most egregiously, ‘Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me’, Janet’s (Lauren Chia’s) signature song and moment of sexual liberation, is completely fumbled in an awkward avoidance of any ‘touching’ at all with Morgan Jackson’s pint-sized but pumped Rocky. This particular song might present a modern production with challenges in terms of its sexual message. But surely the way to deal with that is to find a solution that brings freshness and originality to the material (as the recent production of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat did with the ‘Benjamin Calypso’ song), not simply to tone everything down. That’s like a restaurant simply giving a customer less when they’re running out of ingredients, instead of an interesting alternative dish. Enta- Enta- Entertain me!

The truth is, Christopher Luscombe’s production has been going now for nineteen years. And it’s showing its age. Fun elements like shadow puppets, handheld spotlights and cute cartoon graphics that used to feature in his show have all been shed over the decades, leaving a production that feels like a husk of its former glory. Maybe it’s time, like Frank N. Furter himself in the closing scene of the show, for this production to put its fishnet stockings and boas back in the dressing-up box, look to the stars and say, ‘I’m going home’.