Alex Timbers Directed Rocky Horror

[Alex M]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 12:35am

I have heard this rumor circulating for a little bit from a few people, wondering if anyone else has heard anything. Imagine the kind of set and cast we'd get. Rob McClure and Kerry Butler as Brad and Janet? The kind of celebrities of he'd be able to get as The Criminologist as well! John Mulaney, Nick Kroll, Mike Birbiglia... The list could go on and on! I hope this rumor is true! 

Updated On: 10/31/22 at 12:35 AM

[blaxx]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 1:10am

McClure and Butler can play the leads' grandparents, or did you want Tony Bennett to play Frank'n'Furter?

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 1:47am

Take my money.

[ACL2006]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 6:10am

The rights to the show are unavailable next year(regionally or amateur), so it makes me believe if a revival is in the works.

[darquegk]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 8:31am

Bucks County always ran a Narrator/Eddie/Dr. Scott triple role, which has Alex Brightman written all over it.

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 9:16am

It’s a fun idea but has a bunch of problems:

1) the material isn’t that good. Much of the iconography is in the movie and can’t be replicated on stage. Also helped by the crazy audience.

2) it’s a hard show to run year round because interest peaks at Halloween.

3) it always works best in scrappier, more intimate settings

If there was an off-bway company or savvy commercial producer that wanted to mount it annually, it could probably sell out each year from Labor Day to Veterans Day…but if it’s a commercial endeavor that model could take years to get to profitability. 

[Ke3]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 9:33am

ErmengardeStopSniveling said: "It’s a fun idea but has a bunch of problems:

1) the material isn’t that good. Much of the iconography is in the movie and can’t be replicated on stage. Also helped by the crazy audience.

2) it’s a hard show to run year round because interest peaks at Halloween.

3) it always works best in scrappier, more intimate settings

If there was an off-bway company or savvy commercial producer that wanted to mount it annually, it could probably sell out each year from Labor Day to Veterans Day…but if it’s a commercial endeavor that model could take years to get to profitability."

While all of this is true on paper, the last revival ran for over a year.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 10:44am

There’s a part of me that wants Rocky running for the rest of time. But then I stop and think and it’s the 2000 production I saw almost 70 times, that I want running. So while I’ll welcome any Rocky, I just don’t know how anything can be as perfect as THAT Rocky, where Matt Morrison used to use my face as a seat and I could scream at Dick Cavett and have shouting matches with Terry Mann during the show.


Rocky demands a certain amount of uninhibitedness that I don’t think would be seen as fun or “right” anymore. And that is a comment on where society is right now. I also worry they’d try to clean the show up and change things that could possibly be viewed as “offensive”, instead of just allowing the show to be what it is. 
 

I’m most curious though about who the audience is, now. Todays generation (I say as if I’m 80) doesn’t have Rocky as part of their lives in a way we still did as high schoolers in the 90s. Us drama kids going to the midnight screenings every weekend, knowing every shoutout and just being part of that community and it’s just not something that exists anymore. Hell we don’t even have the film playing in NYC anymore. So while a revival would certainly bring crowds of 40+ year olds, will the show appeal to a younger generation? Or should it, even? 

[jacobsnchz14]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 10:53am

The rumor was that this was Roundabout’s second musical of the season. 

[BCfitasafiddle]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 10:56am

He would be perfect for this. I'd be there in a heartbeat.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 10:58am

Which would be the Airlines or Studio 54. You need a Circle in the Square or a completely redesigned space for ROCKY. The back row needs to be able to hear the front rows shout outs for it to work at all. It’s as much a part of the show as whatever happens on stage. 

[verywellthensigh]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 11:02am

I don't know if Dana Ivey is still acting but she should play the Narrator.

[fashionguru_23]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 11:20am

The 2018 season of the Stratford Festival in Ontario had this become (IIRC) there most successful show of the season. I don't know if this is done everywhere, but they had one male and one female actor planted in the audience to yell out all the things people usually call out during the film, and requested that the audience not join in. The performance I was at, it worked out well. Considering the festival is usually over by end of September/beginning of October, the show didn't seem to be hindered by the summer running season...mind you it was extended, ending a week after Halloween. I think it could it be done all year round. 

It's not like it's "Here's Love", and they are going to play it in July. 

[joevitus]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 11:23am

ErmengardeStopSniveling said: "It’s a fun idea but has a bunch of problems:

1) the material isn’t that good. Much of the iconography is in the movie and can’t be replicated on stage. Also helped by the crazy audience.

2) it’s a hard show to run year round because interest peaks at Halloween.

3) it always works best in scrappier, more intimate settings

If there was an off-bway company or savvy commercial producer that wanted to mount it annually, it could probably sell out each year from Labor Day to Veterans Day…but if it’s a commercial endeavor that model could take years to get to profitability."

Yeah, mostly no. 

1. The material is great--catching songs, funny jokes and pithy insights into the culture leap from the 1950's to the 1970's. Not sure what you mean about "iconography" but a new stage production doesn't have to mimic the movie, though plenty of productions misguidedly do. But then, plenty of revivals of Grease and The Sound of Music ape their film versions as well. 

2. Show ran for seven years in London and has never stopped playing in many countries, especially New Zealand and Australia. Halloween has nothing to do with it.

3. This is right. It does work best in scrappier, more intimate settings. It's a modest, plucky show that works best in that sort of environment.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 11:24am

“…but they had one male and one female actor planted in the audience to yell out all the things people usually call out during the film, and requested that the audience not join in.”

 

This sounds like literal Hell for fans of the show.

[darquegk]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 12:00pm

A lot of people’s Rocky experience is frozen circa 1980s; you still hear callbacks about Gerald Ford and Jane Fonda at a lot of the big shadowcasts. I’m a “professional Rocky fan” in the Pittsburgh area, and I’ve done lead roles and audience participation constantly in the show for nineteen years now.

In my experience, there are three kinds of Rocky audience participators. There’s the ones who come and go all-out on the classic Rocky experience, just yelling the most basic callbacks and throwing things and having a good time as a sanctioned rule breaker. There’s the purists, who try to recreate the Sal Piro script and album note for note. And then there’s the ones who try to keep it fresh, stay topical and “get cancelled” with the newest, darkest and most shocking joke. Granted, Pittsburgh is famously one of those towns where Rocky never went out of style, so there are MANY productions every October and often several in the off season.

In my experience, the only bad Rocky I’ve ever seen has been the one or two productions that explicitly said “we aren’t doing a multimedia immersive participatory communal event with improv and such; we are doing the musical play written by Richard O’Brien, so view it as you’d view any other musical.” You can’t unring a bell, and Rocky doesn’t thrive in such an environment. It’s not why people love it. What Rocky is, is a dark religious experience. Like the Catholics pre-Reformation had the Feast of Fools to invert all social mores, get all your wildness out loud and proud but then return to “civility” with a new appreciation for the norm, Rocky should be an experience where actors and audience alike break all the rules, to better appreciate those rules when order returns.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 12:17pm

^God, I love you for that post. 

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 12:18pm

This should get the Michael Mayer/LITTLE SHOP treatment.  Revive it off Broadway and let it run forever (again).

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 1:04pm

Jordan Catalano said: "Hell we don’t even have the film playing in NYC anymore."

Your other points are valid, but I beg to differ on this one. A seasonal screening in Industry City last week was a massive hit, and NYCRHPS is still going strong every first and third Saturday at Village East, and various other venues all over the city.

[joevitus]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 1:28pm

WiCkEDrOcKS said: "This should get the Michael Mayer/LITTLE SHOP treatment. Revive it off Broadway and let it run forever (again)."

This!

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 1:31pm

Do it in the UCB basement were Titaniq was!

Smaller is better for Rocky (a show I love while acknowledging that it is thin material).

[joevitus]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 1:39pm

darquegk said: "A lot of people’s Rocky experience is frozen circa 1980s; you still hear callbacks about Gerald Ford and Jane Fonda at a lot of the big shadowcasts. I’m a “professional Rocky fan” in the Pittsburgh area, and I’ve done lead roles and audience participation constantly in the show for nineteen years now.

In my experience, there are three kinds of Rocky audience participators. There’s the ones who come and go all-out on the classic Rocky experience, just yelling the most basic callbacks and throwing things and having a good time as a sanctioned rule breaker. There’s the purists, who try to recreate the Sal Piro script and album note for note. And then there’s the ones who try to keep it fresh, stay topical and “get cancelled” with the newest, darkest and most shocking joke. Granted, Pittsburgh is famously one of those towns where Rocky never went out of style, so there are MANY productions every October and often several in the off season.

In my experience, the only bad Rocky I’ve ever seen has been the one or two productions that explicitly said “we aren’t doing a multimedia immersive participatory communal event with improv and such; we are doing the musical play written by Richard O’Brien, so view it as you’d view any other musical.” You can’t unring a bell, and Rocky doesn’t thrive in such an environment. It’s not why people love it. What Rocky is, is a dark religious experience. Like the Catholics pre-Reformation had the Feast of Fools to invert all social mores, get all your wildness out loud and proud but then return to “civility” with a new appreciation for the norm, Rocky should be an experience where actors and audience alike break all the rules, to better appreciate those rules when order returns."

Meh. The problem is the audience participation mostly isn't clever, while the show is. It's frustrating to hear people making fun of what they don't understand. Audience participation used to be a gas up though the mid-80's, when the barrior between film and audience literally seemed to collapse, but then it because this weird competitive thing ("_I'm_ going to say the line first before everyone else to show I know it better--never mind that then it doesn't match up with the line it cues in the film, thus rendering saying it meaningless" or dumb things like "rice wars" during the wedding scene, ruining the fun that stuff like that used to create of feeling you'd somehow entered the movie, were present at the wedding, caught in the rain with Brad and Janet). I mean, it used to be genuinely beautiful when the entire screening room was illuminated by hundreds of lighters, all going off on cue at the word "darkness" in the chorus. But all that was a long time ago.

It would be great if the audience could simply, you know, enjoy the show. But apparently they can't. And although it's understandable that this has happened to stage revivals in the US, it's also the case in countries (like England) where the midnight movie experience never had a big presence.

I do agree that you can't unring a bell, but I think it's unfortunate that audiences can't differentiate between a midnight screening of the movie and a performance with live actors moving along different beats. You can't really find a clever way to stage a line or a new bit of business for a laugh, because the audience will just be screaming the same dumb lines as if they are watching the scene in the movie, and the unique moment the show has tried to create will be lost. The only solution seems to make revivals cartoons of a cartoon, and it feels overblown and rather boringly safe. 

[Lot666]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 1:42pm

Jordan Catalano said: "Todays generation (I say as if I’m 80) doesn’t have Rocky as part of their lives in a way we still did as high schoolers in the 90s."

LOL, try 70s. 

 

[RippedMan]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 1:44pm

I've worked at a few theater companies and this is always their biggest draw of the season which is why they keep doing it. 

Not sure it would work on at a Broadway scale. But maybe they could transform a New World stages space and make it work? 

Whatever happened to that theater where In The Heights played off Broadway?

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 1:46pm

g.d.e.l.g.i. said: "Jordan Catalano said: "Hell we don’t even have the film playing in NYC anymore."

Your other points are valid, but I beg to differ on this one. A seasonal screening in Industry City last week was a massive hit, and NYCRHPS is still going strong every first and third Saturday at Village East, and various other venues all over the city."

Tonight's 11:30 pm screening at the Village East is sold out.

darquegk said: "In my experience, the only bad Rocky I’ve ever seen has been the one or two productions that explicitly said “we aren’t doing a multimedia immersive participatory communal event with improv and such; we are doing the musical play written by Richard O’Brien, so view it as you’d view any other musical.” You can’t unring a bell, and Rocky doesn’t thrive in such an environment."

Exactly! It most certainly does not. I saw an old Siskel & Ebert program from the early 1980s on YouTube where they re-reviewed "Rocky Horror" and Gene Siskel said that the floor show was as important if not more important than the actual movie itself. He felt that if the projector broke down it wouldn't matter because the floor show cast would just go on an act out the whole movie to the audience anyway. 

BTW - I'm a RHPS fan from way back. I was at the 8th Street Playhouse religiously every Friday and Saturday back in the 1980s. I have such great memories of that time.