Rehearsals for The Rocky Horror Show got underway at the Theatre Upstairs in mid-May 1973, in and around the set currently being used by the ongoing production of Barry Reckord’s Give the Gaffers Time to Love You—in which Tim Curry was also appearing.
It was astonishing, as cast and crew came together for the first time, how many little connections had already been forged between everybody involved: the Hair contingent; the Australian allies. . . .
Bourton, Blane and Cruikshank, colleagues from their shared time at the Glasgow Citizen’s Theatre, now found themselves joined by others from that team: assistant costume designer Colin MacNeil, stage manager Chris Peachment and lighting designer Gerry Jenkinson.
Blane, of course, had worked with Curry, who Bourton had coincidentally been introduced to on the night of his first interview for The Rocky Horror Show. Malcolm, Hartley, O’Brien and Sharman had worked together on The Unseen Hand.
Herself a veteran of the Citizen’s Theatre, Patricia Quinn didn’t really know anybody, but her husband, Don Hawkins, had worked with Bourton in They Don’t All Open Men’s Boutiques, Willis Hall’s magnificent television play about the life of journeymen soccer players; while Quinn herself had appeared in a West End revival of The Threepenny Opera, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Barbara Windsor and overseen by Michael White. While also understudying Redgrave, Quinn played one of three whores, alongside Miriam Margolyes and Diana Quick.
And so on. There have been multitudinous casts performing The Rocky Horror Show in the decades since the Theatre Upstairs. But none offered such an exquisite blend of friends, comrades, allies and sympathies as the first.
In 2013, Rayner Bourton told the Daily Express, “Because it was so different and unique there was a tremendous pulling together of all the cast. It is one of the best experiences I have ever had. I felt there was a huge amount of love there.”
The earliest rehearsals revolved around the various cast members reading through the script, while O’Brien performed the songs on guitar. Later in the day, all concerned would begin working with Hartley to shape the individual numbers to their characters, which meant there was also plenty of downtime—which Little Nell, at least, put to good use. One afternoon, Bourton recalls her vanishing for fifteen minutes, then coming back looking very pleased with herself.
“That was okay, I made over five quid.” She’d been out busking.
Patricia Quinn recalled the first day of rehearsals as a nerve-wracking experience, and in particular, her introduction to Bourton.
Reminiscing at the Denton Affair fan convention in 2006, she recalled,
I was a little tentative going into rehearsals. I’m not usually, but because it was a musical, and because they were all meant to be rock singers, supposedly, [I was].
So I came in and saw Rayner with his long blonde hair, I think, wearing a medallion and looking like a rock ’n’ roll person, and I thought; “Oh God, he must be a real rock ’n’ roll singer,” so I was a bit nervous about singing.
Anyway, it turns out he wasn’t a rock ’n’ roll singer at all.
Rehearsing Rocky
The script was constantly being worked on as the rehearsals continued, and not always intentionally.
Those moments where Brad inadvertently introduces Janet Weiss (with a W) as Janet Vice grew from Christopher Malcolm’s own habit of accidentally mispronouncing the name. The line in “Sword of Damocles” where Rocky insists his life is a “mystery” sprang from Bourton consistently not singing the scripted “misery.”
Likewise, O’Brien had intended “Sword of Damocles” would be performed in the actor’s regular singing voice. Bourton and Hartley decided it should be sung in falsetto, to represent the fact that Rocky’s balls had yet to drop. Later, during “Rose Tint My World,” he would adopt an impressive bassy tone, to show that they now had.
Again, in the “Sword of Damocles” sequence, as the song concludes, we are all today familiar with Frank’s brusque rejoinder, “Well really! That’s no way to behave on your first day out.”
Cut before the first preview, the disgruntled inventor originally had a far lengthier speech, beginning with the words “You’ve a very pessimistic outlook for a Sagittarius. I think your rising sign must be in Uranus”—this in the days when the latter planet’s name was pronounced not as the modern “ur-a-nus,” but with the emphasis shifted back one syllable, ur-ay-nus. To sound, to the delight of generations of smutty-minded schoolboys (and apparently Richard O’Brien as well), a lot like “your anus.”
The change may or may not have been to the play’s betterment.
Another early excision follows the then-fully ambulatory Dr. Scott’s arrival into the house, as Doctor Frank-N-Furter prepares to capture the interfering visitor.
“Ah, he’s in the Zen room. Seal off all exits—and all doors—except for those that lead here, and I think there’s time for some quick mind expansion before he gets here.” Donning an electrode-laden headset, he then continues, “I hope there’s enough acid in the batteries—Ah yes. . . .” There is a sudden bang, and then a bemused “Oh my God I think I’ve O-D’d.”
Cut, too, was Columbia pursuing the running Scott with a whip as he enters the laboratory. Instead, the old man was placed on a wheelchair, to hurtle into view, with Columbia first pushing him and then tipping him out at Frank’s feet.
Not all of the changes saw elements being removed, however. Bourton devised the gymnastic routine that transported him from the laboratory platform to the front of the stage, swinging on the overhead scaffolding above cast and audience alike.
Riff-Raff and Magenta were styled as Doctor Frank-N-Furter’s butler and maid, roles that would become essential during the dinner scene, when they would be expected to serve the food. It was Brian Thomson who reminded everyone that they were also aliens, and would thus have no idea at all how a butler and maid should actually behave; any more than Frank would know how to act in his role as lord of the manor.
Thus, we do not see the pair deliberately misbehaving, as they throw the food around the guests. We see them simply doing what they are told, bringing the food to the table and distributing it among the diners. Nobody ever told them anything about etiquette and finesse.
Curry conceived the “4711” tattoo that was drawn (with an eyebrow pencil) on his thigh, knowing that the audience would have no problem getting the joke; “4711” was an Eau de Toilette, manufactured for Boots, the chemist, and marketed specifically toward those young men who knew that certain perfumes might help attract the opposite sex, but had not yet figured out what those perfumes might be. This one just happened to be noxious.
Another welcome addition presented itself when Curry, during the technical rehearsal, started having trouble putting on his rubber gloves and wound up tearing one. Rather than call a halt to the proceedings while they obtained a new glove, Sharman told him simply to carry on . . . . and to make sure he made the same mess of things every night.
And another . . . as Rocky and Janet prepare for their scene, the muscleman reaches into his briefs and pulls out a vanity mirror.
“Janet?” he asks, “have you got any lipgloss?”
Of course she does. It’s in her bra.
Even Magenta’s farewell line, as she and Riff-Raff mount the ladder into the spacecraft, was an ad lib, conceived to fill a moment of otherwise awkward silence. “I wonder if I remembered to lock up the dogs?”
The cast and crew gelled; more than a mere theatrical production, they welded themselves into a family, each one all but sensing the others’ requirements and notions, and pulling them together.
On the night of the final rehearsal, Sharman determined to extract one last piece of savagery from Curry’s performance by staring blank-faced at everything the actor did. Finally Curry cracked under the pressure of the relentless apathy and told him he was behaving like an absolute bastard.
“If only the character you’re playing was an even bigger bastard,” Sharman shot back, and Curry’s eyes glinted. There would be no looking back.
The original Frank-N-Furter, Tim Curry, in full flight.
Film Corporation/Photofest
Enter the Ghouls
For all the work being put in by the cast and crew, The Rocky Horror Show was fashioned as much by circumstance as by design. Because of the volume at which the music needed to be played, the Royal Court decreed that performances could not begin until 10:30 p.m., following the final curtain in the main venue downstairs.
This ensured that it would not end each night until after the last buses and trains had passed, and so the front-of-house staff declined to work late.
For a time, the situation stood at an impasse. Then Jim Sharman came up with a solution. O’Brien, O’Hagen and Little Nell would don traditional usherette outfits, scarlet jackets and black trousers, topped off with the grinning, semitranslucent masks that Sue Blane came across at the theatrical outfitters Theatre Zoo. It was they who would ensure the audience found its seats, pinned on either side of the ramp that led, for who knew what reason, from the stage to the back of the room.
This nightly routine naturally became a part of the theater itself, with the trio deliberately mis-seating patrons and purposely separating couples, anything to ensure a degree of chaos reigned until it was time for the trio to converge upon the stage, their sights set on what—if anybody had even noticed it—appeared to be a shop window mannequin, covered in a dust sheet.
The ushers’ final deed was to welcome the audience in the most sinister tones they could muster.
“Glad you could . . . come . . . tonight.”
Then they ripped the dust sheet from the mannequin to reveal Miss Strawberry Time, preparing to break into song.
All of which was dislocating enough. But there was more. The traditionally staid little Theatre Upstairs was all but unrecognizable. Its regular seating had been replaced by torn and tattered cinema seats. The ashtrays were dirty, the floor was stained. Cobwebs hung from the corners, and a big sign announced “The Sloane Cinema regrets the inconvenience caused to patrons during renovations. A modern three-screen cinema centre will open shortly.”
Then thunder rolled and lightning cracked.
The show was about to begin. And the shocks had only just started.
Remember the ramp? All eyes were on the stage when, about fifteen minutes into the performance, the audience realized that all the performers’ eyes were on the ramp. And so people turned, curiously, and they saw . . .
They gasped . . .
They did a double take.
It was the doctor, but quite unlike any doctor they had ever seen before.
The stage was tiny, cramped, uncomfortable, no more than nine feet from back to front, and further confined by the arch of scaffolding that Brian Thomson designed in miniaturized emulation of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia.
Neither was the auditorium any less squeezed for space; indeed, the audience was as much at the mercy of the cast as the cast themselves were at the mercy of the stage. On more than one occasion, a luckless onlooker narrowly missed (and sometimes not) being kicked in the head as Rocky swung his way along the scaffolding.
There was dust and dirt everywhere, as Bourton discovered as he made his way around, watching as his pristine white bandages grew grubbier with every footfall. Paddy O’Hagan had to crawl his way into the freezer from which he would make his entrance, and then haul himself out of a hole cut in the top. And the radio microphones, while freeing everyone from the encumbrance of handheld mikes, were themselves subject to the whims of local taxi cabs and the emergency services, any and all of whom could be expected to come crackling through the action at least once an evening.
“Super Heroes” ended the show, with the earthlings making their escape. A reprise of “Science Fiction Double Feature” wrapped things up, and then an encore—such a rock ’n’ roll concept—would bring the entire cast out for a reprise of “The Time Warp,” while encouraging the audience to join in, too. Photocopied sheets of paper tucked within the evening’s program even supplied them with handy instructions and diagrams.
Opening Night
Following the previews on June 16 and 18, The Rocky Horror Show officially opened on Tuesday, June 19, 1973, at the Theatre Upstairs, and it readily caught the attention of the theater downstairs. There, Ian Holm and Australian veteran Coral Browne were appearing in the first-ever production of Edward Bond’s The Sea, a comedy set in Edwardian times, in which the inhabitants of a small seaside town grow progressively more disturbed following the death of a popular local man during a storm.
Among the culprits singled out to be blamed for the people’s escalating estrangement are . . . aliens from another planet!
Immediately following that performance, two doughty stage warriors, Browne and her husband, horror maestro Vincent Price, ventured up to the tiny Upstairs room to witness this new production that everybody around the theater, it seemed, was suddenly discussing.
Both were instantly enamored—as indeed was everybody else who came into contact with it. “I sat in front of [Price and Browne],” Michael White later wrote. “Vincent laughed throughout and the audience gave the show a standing ovation.”
Lionel Bart was there, applauding wildly. The Count and Countess De La Bedoyere may not have hit the first night, but they were certainly there soon enough, and were as enthralled as everybody else. “It was wonderful,” the Countess says today. “Tim Curry was mesmerising and the rest of the cast were brilliant. I have never forgotten it, and was proud to have seen it so early in its career.”
The night had gone phenomenally well.
There was a moment of panic beforehand, as Curry apparently succumbed to what he described as a blocked ear, making it difficult for him to hear anything. But a flying visit to a syringe-wielding specialist cured his ills, and from thereon in, the show was unstoppable.
Spirits were high, too, at the opening night party, staged in the wee hours of Wednesday at the massive Furniture Cave warehouse that once stood on the corner of Tetcott Road, at the far end of the King’s Road but conveniently close to a branch of Oddbin’s liquor store. (Earlier hopes of renting a sauna for the occasion went unfulfilled.)
The warehouse was frequently utilized by rock bands for rehearsals—Iggy Pop and the Stooges numbered among its most recent occupants—but the party tonight was to be staged in the Cave itself, in and among the hulking old furniture, statues, antiques and bric-a-brac that were the business’s stock-in-trade.
But still, when the first editions of the new morning’s paper arrived, all mouths dropped open as they read Daily Mail theater critic Jack Tinker’s review. He didn’t even mention the fact that The Rocky Horror Show was a musical. He merely described it as the most brilliant piece of theater he’d seen in a long time.
“[Richard O’Brien] has taken all the kitsch fantasies of the ’50s—horror movies, Charles Atlas muscle bound ads, sequined pop stars—and turned them into the high camp sensuality of the ’70s. . . . From Bill Haley to David Bowie is one hell of a time leap. Mr. O’Brien measures it effortlessly, illuminatingly and wittily.”
The Guardian was equally effusive. “Normally I find camp exploitations of old movies highly resistible because they imply a wholly unjustified feeling of cultural superiority. But this show won me over entirely because it achieves the rare feat of being witty and erotic at the same time.” And Time Out moved as if to head off the moral brigade by describing the play as “provocative rather than permissive.”
Even the show’s producer was astonished by the success of the evening. More than thirty years later, in an interview with the British Independent newspaper, Richard O’Brien recalled, “Michael White [came] up to me after the first night and saying, ‘I think we’ve got a hit, Richard.’
“I said, ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ and walked away. It just didn’t register.” The play’s success, he continued, was, and remains, the biggest shock of his entire life. “The original run was three weeks. I was expecting to be looking for another job.”
Instead he found himself helming an immediate phenomenon.
On the second night, Jonathan King arrived demanding that he be allowed to release the cast recording. On the fourth, the cast were photographed for a spread in the then-prestigious Sunday Times newspaper.
“By the end of the week, people were just queueing up to get in,” Quinn recalled at the Denton Affair fan convention. “We were invited as a cast to restaurants, clubs and parties, and lovely things like that. It was all quite new to us. We were the stars of the town by word of mouth.”