Let’s do the time warp again- but why?

Call me cranky (or much worse) if you will but I don’t get the hype of Rocky Horror. That’s why I never saw the film or the play and didn’t learn the dance moves. Well, I’ve been now, given it a red hot go and I’m still ambivalent about it. Is there something wrong with me?

On paper, I should like it. It’s rock and roll. It’s naughty, risqué and had one hell of a main character- Frank-N-Furter and a sidekick named Riff Raff who looks like a scary version of Legolas from Lord of the Rings.

The Saturday night crowd were Rocky fans through and through. Some wearing the whole Frank-N-Furter rig and a smudge of black lippy, creasing into the corner of middle-aged lips.  Anyone there under 40, was there to see what all the fuss was about. This crowd was committed to a good time from the opening overture to the final bows. There were screams for more, heckles galore for Myf Warhurst and gasps at Jason Donovan’s talent for dancing in high heels. There’s nothing they didn’t like.

Which got me thinking. What is our fascination, with old, the reprise and the rerun? From shows like Rocky Horror to tribute bands, and almost has –been rock stars performing in RSL clubs we lap them up and demand more. Maybe we’re creatures of habit and comfort, and like seeing the same things- just a bit repackaged. Maybe we are attempting to capture the feeling of wonder when we were young, didn’t have chin hairs and could drink the night away. In repeating the old, for a couple of hours, we become the younger splendid versions of ourselves. And who wouldn’t want that?

I’m all for looking back into my youth and having a bit of a wallow whether it be listening to my 80s balding idols (but still so sexy) in a Melbourne pub, watching reruns of Get Smart or Bewitched or squeezing into the bustier and tutu I last wore in 1989. But maybe, it doesn’t pay to look too closely back then as I might see things I don’t want to remember, the misogyny of pub band rooms, gropes from skinheads at a school dance and 12-year-old me being intimidated by a group of boys on the way home. They were simpler times it is said frequently. Simpler maybe, but not so gentle or even better.

We all evolve from our twenty-year-old selves into something else. Tastes change through maturity, experience and education. What we loved, laughed at, or enjoyed at 21 can be a source of embarrassment or angst in later years. Perhaps we see things more clearly with the advantage of a few decades down the track. Times changes, people change, and before we know it our past is a very different country.

In my experience, my love of top 40 music, morphed into new wave, swamp rock, dirge nasty messy music. My ideal pop star was once David Cassidy, now it’s Nick Cave.   My bookshelf once awash with chick lit now leans toward memoir and cookbooks. I still love theatre but the more alternative the better. I want to be challenged, pummelled and semi-destroyed by art. 

Back to my last Saturday at the Athenaeum theatre. In terms of a live show, it was all you could want. Two celebs having a stand-up good time, Jason relishing the Frank- N-Furter persona and Myf looking like she was having a ball as the narrator, The cast, is diverse and oh so talented. Their voices lifted the roof off the room and the vibe was feel-good happy get your rocks off. People sang along, mouthed the words to all the lines, and were as much a part of the show as the actors onstage. One woman in front of us leaped to her feet every few minutes, shrieking and waving a feather boa. Not what you’d expect in a theatre really but I’m thinking that with a show like Rocky Horror where it’s all about mayhem and chaos such audience behaviour is appropriate and part of the experience. Too bloody bad if there’s a feather boa flung into your face every few minutes, the lady was having the time of her life.

I guess my other beef is that I found the plot strange. All American, Boy and Girl break down, enter a spooky house, meet lots of strange folks and have lots of sex. Fair enough, sounds like a fun night out. Suddenly there’s the introduction of a new character in a wheelchair and the discovery of aliens. People are killed. The End. The alien theme made no sense. Why have that in it at all? What the hell happened? However, it doesn’t matter really. The creators, Jim Sharman and Richard O’Brien are doing very well, from the show, the reruns and probably the merch’. And the audience apart from me, didn’t care if the plot was as thin as Frank N Furter’s negligee -overall it was a grand night out.