Even right now it looks as if an nearly unbelievable theatrical success story. This summer season, that insanely implausible musical The Rocky Horror Present celebrates its fiftieth anniversary.
Since its premiere in June 1973 in a tiny upstairs room at London’s Royal Courtroom Theatre, it has been successful everywhere in the world, as it’s presently on one other UK tour.
Is the creator, Richard O’Brien, stunned by the sheer magnitude of his enduring recognition, I ponder? “Nicely sure,” he says. “The factor with Rocky is it is at all times been a shock. It was a shock from day one.’
On the telephone from New Zealand, the place he spent his teenagers and now lives once more, Richard does the Time Warp with me – he thinks again to how the present took place, when he was a struggling actor and author.
After emigrating together with his mother and father from Gloucestershire to New Zealand’s North Island on the age of ten, when his father purchased a sheep farm, Richard returned to the UK within the mid-Nineteen Sixties, the place he shortly established himself within the swinging inventive scene from London.
“I knew Mick Jagger’s girlfriend on the time [Chrissie Shrimpton], who continues to be a pricey good friend of mine, and I wrote songs with a boy from Liverpool who went to highschool with George Harrison,” he recollects. “You did not want cash, and there was a buzz within the air — I look again and assume what a beautiful, free time I had.”
When it got here to theatre, nonetheless, Richard says locations just like the Royal Courtroom have been hungry for revolutionary however oh-so-serious work: ‘Agitprop was excessive on the listing – hitting folks on the top with a message was superb. However leisure did not appear price it.’
Nonetheless, leisure in its purest type was what Richard was desirous about, and so it was that after performing a humorous track he had written about B-movies at a film trade Christmas celebration, he was impressed to placed on a whole present. making him the cheesy-and-cheerful sci-fi and horror movies he beloved, which inform the story of an harmless all-American couple whose automobile breaks down exterior the fort of a sure transvestite, omnisexual mad scientist, Dr. Frank-N- Furter.
Richard himself took on the position of Furter’s hunchbacked butler, Riff Raff.
There was some buzz earlier than Rocky Horror opened, partly as a result of director Jim Sharman was behind one other latest musical hit, Jesus Christ Celebrity, through which Richard had additionally appeared. ‘However it was nonetheless a fringe theater occasion,’ emphasizes Richard. And so it was outstanding when, on the final night time of the preliminary five-week run, that they had ‘Elliott Gould and Mick Jagger on the steps exterior to come back in – and we needed to cancel.’
The cancellation took place as a result of the actor who performed the titular Rocky, Furter’s Adonis-esque lab creation, suffered a painful irritation from glitter moving into his tiny swimming trunks.
Then the present was upgraded to the bigger Kings Street Theatre. Then in 1975 got here the movie adaptation, which turned a cult phenomenon. As delightfully foolish because the present was, it was additionally groundbreaking in its free-spirited strategy to sexuality and gender. On reflection, Richard says writing was a approach of processing his personal emotions about his gender identification.
Prior to now, he is described himself as about 70 p.c male and 30 p.c feminine, although he laughs that his spouse Sabrina says he “skimps a bit” with that ratio, and the stability is extra 60/40 or 50/50.
“I name myself a tranny, no matter meaning. Some folks get mad at me for calling myself that, it is a minefield lately. However I believe [Rocky Horror] was an excuse for me to expel a few of my very own nature and have some enjoyable with it. It was very cathartic. It did not really feel that approach on the time, however I believe it should have been that approach in the long term.”
What’s fascinating is how a piece that was as soon as thought of the epitome of offense is now seen because the epitome of standard, mainstream leisure. In that respect, Richard can hardly imagine his journey.
“A number of years in the past I came upon that the Queen attended a college and the academics for some cause made all these youngsters do the Time Warp [dance]. And I assumed, “How does that work?” She should have been as shocked and shocked as I used to be.’
Does he thoughts that it has misplaced its sharpness? “I do not need it to be sharp. I need folks to chortle. Standing at the back of the theater and listening to the band prepare dinner and the viewers roar offers me actual pleasure.”
After Rocky Horror, Richard cast a profession each eccentric and eclectic, from internet hosting the journey sport present The Crystal Maze to taking part in the Baby Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on stage. He has been main a quieter life within the southern hemisphere for about ten years now.
However on the age of 81, and regardless of well being issues, having suffered a stroke in 2020, he retains his subversive drive. He is teaming up together with his Rocky Horror musical collaborator Richard Hartley on Kingdom Of Bling, a “satirical fairy story” they plan to make as an animated song-featured movie, that includes “characters just like Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch.”
As for his profession evaluation, Richard ‘would not have minded taking part in Physician Who’ – and what good casting that may have been – however aside from that he has no actual regrets. And truthfully, for those who’ve made as indelible a mark on popular culture as he has, who would?
The Rocky Horror Present is touring the UK via October with a six-week run on the Peacock Theatre, London, from Could 3 to June 10
