It feels a bit foolish to carp. In the twenty-plus years I have loved this work, I have seen abysmal production after abysmal production. Whether you like the movie or not, one thing it did was to preserve the original outlook of the people who put this piece together (stiched together from various sources and jolted to life, just like Frankenstein’s monster), and considering the woefully misguided stage versions I’ve sat through (which generally have had the high-wattage energy of a retirement home needlepoint class), even a half-decent production is nothing to turn one’s nose up at. This production is more than half-decent, but it doesn’t quite work quite a bit of the time, and that’s a problem.

The good things first. Staging almost the entirety of the show on a catwalk that stretches the length of the room is a great idea. This show, even before the advent of audience particaption, was always one that embraced and practically placed itself in the lap of the audience. A proscenium setting largely kills that possibilty, while theater-in-the-round wouldn’t allow for the presentational razzmatazz in which this musical is soaked. The staging here circumvents both problems. The usherette walking through the audience throwing out goodies to the crowd as she sings her ode to the late night horror show is wonderful, and the concept fits the show’s ambient tone: she’s wearing a teddy rather than a skirt, and she tosses out, not condiments, but condoms. In one sense, this moment embodies the various elements of the show (nostalgia, rock, horror, sex) better than any other in the evening. The band is strong, too, as they are all night long, and the lighting is effectively tatty showbiz, taking us into a slightly fog-tinted, colored-spotlit world of the imagination.

But immediately following this opening, Columbia rushes out to chant the midnight movie audience rouser “Gimme and ‘R’…” which makes no sense at this point (it would work as a pre-show bit, but to stop the show right after it began is pointless). And this sort of thing goes on all night. The show stops. For a 80’s rock bit. For an actor to go wildly out of character with ad-libbs. For a can-can. None of this even tenuously related to the story.

But then that’s the big problem with this production. The story isn’t told. The dialogue is barely staged, the songs minimally choreographed. The relationships are quickly lost. And so the pleasure of putting cardboard characters through their B-movie paces disappears, as does the saga of Brad and Janet’s seduction/corruption by the “dark side.”

One actor really maintains the truth of his performance, and that’s Brad, who is not only the best performer in the show, but easily the best Brad I’ve ever seen onstage. He’s committed to his feelings underneath his cartoonish exterior, and often displays a tight-lipped rejection of the decadence which surrounds him (like Sean Connary in Zardoz, his Brad knows he can’t escape the mess he’s in, but thinks he reatains some dignity by refusing to succumb to it; neither turns out to be right). Which makes moments like “Once In A While,” his solo in the floor show, and “Superheroes” surprisingly touching, really the only points in the show where that effective blurring of parody/earnestness in the orginal material is truly brought to life.

No one else in the show comes close to this, though they are often good. But the show has no story anymore for them to thread a performance to, and as the evening goes on, most sense of distinct personalities is lost.
Maybe it wouldn’t be if we could hear them. Given the band, and the loud audience, microphones seem a necessity, and the entire cast wears headsets, but some of them short out with distressing frequency, and even when transmitting often send out noisy obtrussive crackles. A lot of the dialogue is inaudible.

Yet I’m not sure that’s the entire problem, because the Frank, who is also the director, barely bothers to act his part. He has a persona, no doubt. He’s a gracious grand-dame, more presiding over his vehicle than actively fueling it; he has a great voice and an appealing stage presence, but he doesn’t differenciate. Everything is played on a slightly reserved, even keel. He tosses off Frank’s creation speech (the characters height of mad scientist insanity) as if he were reading stage directions in rehearsal, and the entire event is smothered by the large device to create Rocky being wheeled across the catwalk, anyway. He has no real anger when he chases Riff Raff in after Rocky has escaped, no antagonism when he calls Janet down with “Planet Schmanet Janet.” He seems to simply want to sing the songs, but all he does is sing them. He barely moves at all, other than to walk back and forth. He is sort of the rock equivalent of an Eastern Island statue. A smiling one.

Like most productions of this work (why, I don’t understand), camp isn’t the goal, beyond the faint aura of camp which hovers over the basic idea of drag and gender-bending. The peformers don’t play in a dreadfully-delicious deadpan manner (what Richard O’Brien once referred to as “Peyton Place-style acting”). Instead they play their parts in the vein of broad comedy. It works better here than in most produtions, I think because if they don’t have a camp sensibility, they do have a unified sensibility, and a consistent world is created for the show.

If it all seems to fall the pieces as the evening goes by, there are two saving graces at the end. One is a fairly well-conceived “Super Heroes.” The other is the brilliant decision not to turn Magenta back into the Usherette, but rather have both Riff Raff and Magenta sing the reprise of “Science Fiction/Double Feature” as they lightly prance down the catwalk. As if they are giving us the ending they wanted all along. And though this turns the song from a slightly mournful number to a more lighthearted (if sinisterly so) ending, it works, and leads quite nicely into the curtain call. Maybe that sums up the whole show. It may not be Rocky Horror in essence, but it works quite nicely and left this audience member pleased. It left the majority of the audience much more satisfied than that. This was an extended run performance, and the show seems to be a yearly staple in the city. The show has found it’s audience, and it gives that audience what it wants. Isn’t that the goal of popular entertainment?