'The Rocky Horror Show - 2010 Tour' theatre review - Nowt2Do.Com: Listings and Reviews for Bristol and Beyond!


	Brad and Janet, two lost souls on a wet night, the car has a flat and there is no-one in sight. Wait a minute; didn’t we pass a huge gothic mansion back down the road? The kind of place where you’d only ring the bell if you were in a 50’s American B movie. Perhaps they’ll have a phone. Hmm. Okay. Let’s examine the evidence: the Hunchback Old retainer, the room full of electrical gizmos built to regenerate life, the promiscuous bi-sexual transvestite host in the hose. Who would live in a house like this? It’s over to you. The answer is, of course, Frank ‘N’ Furter, Richard O’Brien’s outrageous creation who is not your average stay at home transvestite; he’s positively out of this world. Welcome to The Rocky Horror Show, where almost everything is not quite what it seems. For starters, the show has a story that seems to have been written by an eight year old with too much access to DVD’s of old – and dubious – movies. Plot – forget it. There’s no character development, only one breakout song (The Time Warp) and it’s not even that funny. Except…who needs plot when there is so much glorious nonsense going on? The characters are big enough to cope with their two dimensions, every song is attacked with much energy and sits perfectly within the show and, to cap it all, the audience brings most of the jokes. Long before ‘interactive’ was ever on the agenda Rocky Horror was just that. An audience participation show where the well rehearsed heckles from the paying public sit alongside fabulously creative – and often filthy- new stuff, mostly, though not entirely, aimed at The Narrator; in this production the fabulous Michael Starke. It is the participation that makes this show like no other. Yes, there are some fine performances here; Haley Flaherty and Richard Meek (nice legs) make a terrific Janet and Brad. Dominic Tribuzio is the pumped up blonde bimbo, Rocky, created for his master’s pleasure. As he bounced across the stage, his flick flaks a marvel to behold, a line from another show featuring drag came to mind, “like Jello on springs”. At the centre of the storm is David Bedella as Frank ‘N’ Furter, as confident a transvestite alien as you are ever see. Great voice too. The glory of The Rocky Horror Show does not lie wholly in the show itself but what so many devotees, dressed in so very little, bring to it. Performances on-stage are enhanced by the hordes of Brads, Janets, Frank ‘N’ Furters, Megentas and Riff Raffs in front of them in the auditorium. Guys, if ever you dreamt of pulling on fishnet stockings and suspenders here’s the show that allows you to walk down the street to the theatre dressed as you always dreamed. I have one criticism: the sound. Waaaayyyyyyy too loud, TO THE POINT OF DISTORTION. An unnecessary blemish on what was otherwise a fabulous night.