The Stage

Rocky Horror Show

Published Wednesday 18 May 2011 at 12:15 by Paul Vale

Say what you will about the Rocky Horror Show but after 25 years the rock’n’roll musical still manages to fill theatres and sustain national tours. With much of its history now enshrined in the musical theatre annals, from its inauspicious origins Upstairs at Royal Court through to the fall and rise of the movie version and beyond, one might think there is little can be added to the tale of Brad and Janet’s encounter with the evil alien Dr Frank’n’Furter. Certainly this production adds very little that is new but to its credit, it avoids the temptation of slavish emulating the popular movie or the recent tour.

Claire Storey, Matthew Quinn and Tome Jude in Rocky Horror Show at the Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch Photo: Nobby Clark

With union battles being fought by musicians on Broadway at the moment, this production scraps the band altogether in favour of the cast playing everything from electronic violins to horns. This may be customary for Cut to the Chase, the repertory company based at the Queen’s but with so much expected of them, concessions have been made vocally and choreographically and the production suffers.

Fortunately the central casting of Mark Stanford as Brad and particularly Sarah Scowen as Janet manages to centre the piece. Matthew Quinn is sadly neither frightening nor particularly funny as Frank and many of the laughs only occur with the arrival of Simon Jessop as Dr Scott. Bob Carlton’s direction is perfunctory at best and while Donna Berlin is credited for choreography there is very little in terms of dance numbers in this production.

An inventive and fluent set design from Mark Walters hits the right note but is ill served by poor costumes and generally shoddy make-up and wigs that feature as an after-thought rather than integral to the atmosphere of the show.