Doctor Frank N. Furter

Just in time for Hallowe’en– drag queens are invading our stages! If you pop on over to OBERON (part club, part theater) on the edge of Harvard Square, you’ll be caught between a rocky horror and a hard place (…if you know what I mean.) at THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW!!!! The fabulous Ryan Landry founder of The Gold Dust Orphan Theater Company– and the wickedest man I ever met in a corset– plays the role he was born to: Dr. Frank N. Furter. You know the story.

One rainy night two innocent newly weds– Janet and Brad– break down in front of an eery gothic mansion where inside dwells the kinky Dr. Frank N.Furter– tranvestite from the Planet Transexual and the galaxy Transylvania! He’s just concluded a Frankensteinian experiment and created the perfect man named: ROCKY HORROR!!! What ensues is all manner of wacky wanton sexual hi-jinks as the bad doctor explodes the boundaries of  everybody’s sexuality!  Innocent Janet and Brad are never the same again!!!

This horror/science fiction pastiche debuted on the fringes of the London Theater scene in the early 70’s, and re-erupted onscreen as a participatory phantasmagoria skewering the inno-sexuality of the beach party 50’s and 60’s. Cult audiences offered themselves up on the alter of altered sexuality, as they danced the time warp and screamed at the screen. The night I saw it, the audience was significantly subdued, infested as it were with (re)press and “invited”guests.

The show is loud, and unrelenting, and everywhere, up and down and all around the upper ramparts and balcony tables (I tried to grab Dr. Frank N. Furter’s rump as he made his mascaraed  way across tabletops and into the arms of the chanting masses.) The show needed better sound (boost Landry’s mike-his smoldering asides are worth the price of admission) and pump up the opening number with better lighting, a few more bodies, crisper choreography and direction–that really fills the space. My problem with the show is my problem with almost every show in that room: I don’t know where to put my eyes. But this show is well cast: Kayla Foster is a bitchin’ Janet, and finds her true love in Gene Dante’s geeky bad Brad! The show’s a trip and will settle in as it finds its audience every Friday night and rocks its way into the offbeat heart of Harvard Square.

(Check ONSTAGE for calendar and info!)