My Beautiful Creature

I spent my high school years crazy, madly in love with Rocky Horror. I saw the movie at midnight screenings at the Varsity Theatre eighty times during my four years of high school (1978-1982).

For a media class, senior year, my friend Stephanie and I created a multimedia presentation explaining the Rocky Horror phenomenon. We got an A+.

A decade later, I started New Line Theatre, a company designed to produce shows just like Rocky, but the production rights for the show were tied up for years!

Finally in 2002, New Line got to produce the stage show, and it was a blast. We were the first in the region to do it after all those years, so our audiences were thrilled to see Rocky in its original form.

Afterwards, I wrote a chapter about the show for my book, Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Musicals.

Twenty-three years later, here I am directing Rocky Horror again. It's been a wonderful ride, with a wonderful cast, band, and staff. But Dr., Frank N. Furter has left the building.

Our brilliant graphic artist Matt Reedy even re-designed our poster after he saw the show, to match our actors and costumes. He's been designing our posters for more than twenty years, and he's done really outstanding work for us. You can see all of it in our coffee table book of New Line posters.

As always, I learned new things about the show, even after my (almost) lifelong love affair with it.

My biggest takeaway -- how ballsy it is that this show spends all evening in subversive but very silly satire, with outrageous characters in a bizarre situation, and then, the story ends in total seriousness. Frank's gorgeous power ballad "I'm Going Home" always knocks the audience out because though it may be shallow, it's serious. No joke.

After that, once Riff-Raff kills half the cast, there are no more laughs. The story ends with the exit of the mutinous, homeward bound Riff-Raff and Magenta, but the show doesn't end yet.

Instead, all these characters, alive and dead, leave us with a final sobering thought, not a hopeful one, not a musical comedy ending. They sing the very serious, densely poetic "Super Heroes," reminding us that despite all the fun we've had with this show (and with the Sexual Revolution) that freedom and fun sometimes come at a cost.

Brad steps forward and sings:

I've done a lot;
God knows I've tried.
To find the truth,
I've even lied.
But all I know
Is down inside, 
I'm bleeding.

He tried to be open to the experience, but it broke him. Then Janet steps forward and sings:

And super heroes
Come to feast,
To taste the flesh
Not yet deceased;
And all I know
Is still the beast
Is feeding.

Janet describes her sexual awakening, with the dubious understanding that once awakened, it doesn't go back to sleep. And though she ultimately enjoyed her awakening, this new Janet does not belong now in the world where she lives. (Richard O'Brien's sequel-adjacent second film Shock Treatment rebalances Brad and Janet, for an ironically unhappy Happy Ending.)

The Narrator closes Rocky Horror by telling us we are lost, in time and space. Not just Brad and Janet; all of us too. And we know he's right. And that's a hell of a way to end this rowdy, vulgar rock fable.

But I wonder if Rocky Horror without that sober ending would have been as big a success over time. The last two songs force us to re-think what we've just seen in a new context -- the human pain and suffering of these people who've been through this experience (exactly like several Shakespeare plays do to us), which parallel real-life pain and suffering. This whole musical shows us our own world, but in a cultural funhouse mirror; then finally at the end, it takes that distorted mirror away and lets us see ourselves, no more goofy aliens, no more rock and roll. No more ironic distance.

Rock and roll equals sex in this world, so rock must be banished at the end of the story as well.

Without "Super Heroes," this is arguably a rapey, dated musical about sexual assault. With "Super Heroes," it's an insightful, adult commentary on the real-world ramifications of the sexual openness of the 1960s -- or really, on any moment in history when oppression and freedom do battle within our culture, and the Others rise up. Like right now.

My other big takeaway from our run of Rocky is that no matter how frustrating these times seem to me personally, people need stories more than ever, to try and make sense of the chaos of this world. It matters that we keep telling stories, and it matters which stories we tell and how fearlessly. We can't hide. We have to tell the truth. Even if it pisses some people off. That's the job.

This show revealed uneasy truths about us when it debuted onstage in 1973 and on screen in 1975, when New Line first produced it in 2002, and now, in 2025, maybe even more than when it first opened.

As I wrote in my program notes, "Rocky Horror is lots more than sex, drugs, and rock and roll. We can revel in the anarchy and craziness of this incredibly entertaining rock and roll fable, but our real world is peeking out from between the sheets, and it’s begging us to pay attention."

So many people leaving our Rocky performances told me how much they needed that experience. It was certainly good medicine -- and a call to action? -- for all of us. That's what art does.

Even though I despair for our country, still I know that my job -- my place in the world -- is as storyteller. And in today's world of intentional lies and misinformation, our duty as storytellers is even more vital now, to help explain this world, to connect people to each other, to tell the truth.

Rocky Horror does that. Our next show Rent does that too. And so do the shows we're planning for next season. That's the job.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. To buy Rent tickets, click here.

P.P.S. To check out my newest musical theatre books, click here.

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