Just a few days after being on a 10 hour flight back from my first holiday in possibly 20+ years, I was thrown back in to the eventing ring and dragged along to see a show I’ve been trying to see for a long time, the Rocky Horror Picture Show. This was held at Liverpool’s Playhouse Theatre were we held a fantastic triplet of seats, made even better by the fact that there was nobody directly sitting in front of us. I went into this one assuming that everybody would know the story of The Rocky Horror Picture Show but.. one of my guests proved me to be incorrect and was talking about a ‘Plant that talks’, which I think was a reference to ‘The Little Shop of Horrors’… hmmm.
Anyway, so it goes.. Brad and his new fiancée break down on their road trip. Brad, being ‘macho’ suggests they go to the house they saw a few miles back to ask to use the telephone, and from there, pretty much everything in their lives fall apart, as who opens the door… Why no other than Riff Raff, the ‘butler’…
The Playhouse in Liverpool is not a massive theatre by any stretch seating just 760 people in total and unfortunately, on the evening we attended the auditorium was not full to capacity. The stage is sizeable and the sets were appropriately dressed for the occasion. The show was around 120 minutes long and included a 20 minute interval between the first and second acts. During the break we did have someone come and sit in the seats in front of us, but luckily it didn’t affect the view we had of the stage. The singing and dancing within the show as of a professional standard.. I think if you spend enough time watching Students and non-professional productions, you can sometimes forget that professional productions do exist and do still tour. But from its sound & lighting cues and stage direction & choreography, the production was put together in an in-sync way.
Standout performances from I would say Frank-N-Furter (played by Stephen Webb) and Riff Raff (played by Job Greuter) were outstanding performances. Completely in character at all times, not a hint of tiredness with high-energy all the way through. As it should be. Notably, Rocky (played by Morgan Jackson) showed off his peak-performance in a way that went down very well with the ladies present. But he wasn’t just beefcake, he could dance and conducted the required choreography with poise and grace including some well-executed backflips!
The audience interaction and involvement was on-point too. Some of the people in the audience dressed up and some of them really.. dressed up and went to town with it (literally). It was obvious that the audience we were with were a mixture of people who’ve seen the show before, perhaps different productions of it and those (like me) who were completely new to it. Either way, we all enjoyed ourselves and if you can get out to see it, its still on, as it’s run at Liverpool’s Playhouse Theatre finishes on the 4th January 2025. – Go.. Go see it!