'Don't dream it. Be it!' Get Your Tickets to Roxy Regional Theatre's ROCKY HORROR Before It Closes

What rugby shorts did for Paul Mescal’s thighs in 2020’s Normal People, so do fishnet stockings do for Bradley Oosterink’s thighs in the Roxy Regional Theatre’s The Rocky Horror Show in 2023. Not that Mr. Oosterink’s thighs are the best things about the Roxy’s 11th annual iteration of the classically off-kilter and decidedly off-beat musical, but they are indeed a highlight.

With a creative team led by director Leigh Martha Klinger, choreographer Emily Ruck and musical direction by Allison Kelly, this year’s Rocky Horror offers a newly refreshed take on the rebellious and rambunctious musical by Richard O’Brien that debuted on London’s West End in 1973 and which subsequently was filmed in 1975, gaining cult status in the years after.

As beloved and revered as it is bizarre and unique, The Rocky Horror Show year after year packs in the audiences – which are a blend of longtime devotees, the jaded and the curious, along with newcomers who are singled out “as virgins” during performances – at The Roxy Regional Theatre. This year, Ruck (the company’s interim artistic director and executive director) assembled a new creative team to breathe reimagined life into the annual escapade, resulting in a show that is still breathlessly appealing, devastatingly entertaining and unexpectedly sentimental.

Perhaps it’s a case of not seeing the show for a couple of years, but the new production now onstage through Saturday at The Roxy seems somehow more heartfelt and genuine. Hell, I’d say it's even kinda sweet.

Kudos to Klinger-Karg for her expansive vision for the piece that includes a certain reverence for horror/sci-fi films that exemplify the “Time Warp” of popular culture of the 1930s-1950s, while invigorating the musical with a lighter-than-air sense of whimsy that is sure to delight audiences of all stripes, whether longtime fans or recent converts to the show. Kelly’s musical direction keeps the theater rocking, while the live band’s (which includes Arielle Chambers on the piano, Thad Wallus on guitar, Caleb Barlow on bass and Bernard Lott on drums) performance of the score is fire!

Ruck puts her actors through an energetic workout from start to finish, with terrific choreography that bring the show’s musical numbers to life with quirky enthusiasm that is tremendously engaging and wonderfully immersive (just ask the people dancing in the aisles how they feel after curtain and enjoy it while it happens).

At its heart, Rocky Horror tells the story of a newly engaged couple – Brad Majors and Janet Weiss (played by the aforementioned [and thicc] Oosterink and Kayla Brandt, both of whom are ideally cast in their roles) who find themselves with a flat tire (and presumably no spare, damn it!), who end up at the door of the closest dark and foreboding castle just up the road. “Over At the Frankenstein Place,” aka the castle, as the erstwhile “asshole” and soon-to-be “slut,” discover, is the lair/lab of the mysterious Frank N Furter (played with utter glee and over-the-top melodramatic style by Travis Ulrich), who is self-described as a “sweet transvestite from Transsexual Transylvania.”

Along with his “staff” – the gender-bending and frighteningly unctuous Riff-Raff (a quivering, quaking and loquacious Alex Van Buren), the oversexed and overheated Magenta (played by the sublime Ashley Birnbaum) and Columbia (the charmingly off-putting Faith Konty) – Frank N Furter lords over his followers with an iron fist (clad in a perfectly styled black opera glove, naturally) and a mesmerizing, confounding and altogether awe-inspiring blend of sex, glamour and rock-and-roll.

There’s also the kidnapped biker named Eddie (Ansley Arthur is having the time of their life in the role), who’s minus some body parts, lurking along the corridors leading to Frank’s lab, where there resides the perfect man: Rocky, the very personification of the Charles Atlas bodybuilding regime, played to, well, Ken Doll perfection by Matthew Hawkins, who looks swell in leopard-skin and conveys an earnest sincerity that makes him all the more appealing.

As the show’s buttoned-up narrator – who keeps the story moving along at an impressive clip – David Graham, a Roxy veteran of countless shows, has never been better, delivering his lines with enough smarminess to underscore the show’s subversive nature.

As with every version of Rocky Horror experienced at The Roxy, the 2023 edition is almost too much fun to be legal, and tickets for the remaining few performances are SCARCE! But do whatever it takes to indulge in this experience for yourself: Don’t dream it. Be it.

The Rocky Horror Show. Music, lyrics and book by Richard O’Brien. Directed by Leigh Martha Klinger. Musical direction by Allison Kelly. Choreographed by Emily Ruck. Stage managed by Kenneth L. Waters Jr. Presented by The Roxy Regional Theatre, Clarksville. Through October 28. For further details, go to www.roxyregionaltheatre.org. Running time: 90 minutes (with one 15-minute intermission).

pictured at top Bradley Oosterink and Kayla Brandt

photos by Emily Ruck

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