> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.scenemag.co.uk/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# REVIEW: Rocky Horror Show @Theatre Royal
- URL: https://www.scenemag.co.uk/review-rocky-horror-show-theatre-royal/
- Published: 2018-12-20T12:18:06.000Z
- Updated: 2018-12-20T12:18:06.000Z
- Description: The Rocky Horror Show at the Theatre Royal, with new cast, set and production, rises to the occasion with enough kinky gusto to help you cast away your inhibitions.
- Author: Besi

## The *Rocky Horror Show* at the Theatre Royal, with new cast, set and production, rises to the occasion with enough kinky gusto to help you cast away your inhibitions.

![](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/web-600-3-7.jpg)

**DEFTLY narrated by** suited comedian **Dom Joly**, who takes the expected repartee with the audience in his stride, the kinky tale tells the story of a newly engaged couple getting caught in a storm.

In need of a phone, the hapless duo come across a spooky castle, home to the debauched Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a pan-sexual, cross-dressing mad scientist portrayed by a strapping **Stephen Webb** who, while lacking Rocky stalwart **David Bedella’s** unbridled insanity, comes with a whole load of lip puckered gyrating during Sweet Transvestite, a song dripping with raw sex appeal.

Bathed in nostalgia, the set design comprises cartoonish cut outs and the lush opulence of Frank-N-Furter’s castle and the kitsch laboratory scenes, parodying science fiction B movies with naff gadgets and lasers, suck in the audience, many of whom had succumbed to the mantra *“don’t dream it, be it”* by wearing feather boas, suspenders and a healthy amount of leather!

The sexually repressed and naïve Brad and Janet were performed with just the right amount of all-American values – **Joanne Clifton** served up a dollop of Apple Pie as good-girl-gone-bad Janet, coquettish during *Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me*, and **Ben Adams** as the perpetually confused Brad broke our hearts (just a bit!) with the soppy ballad *Once in a While*.

**Laura Harrison** was electric as fan-favourite and raven-haired Magenta, and together with **Kristian Lavercombe‘s** Riff Raff, the snivelling hunchbacked master of Frank-N-Furter, she plotted and calculated, culminating in a bombastic return to their home planet of Transsexual, in the galaxy of Transylvania, before an orgiastic party took hold with the ensemble piece *Rose Tint My World*, which saw the now corseted Brad, Janet, Rocky and Columbia, a groupie whose hyper-activity was brought to life with just the right amount of helium by the wonderfully named Miracle Change, come together.

After over 40 years, the *Rocky Horror Show* has suffered little more than a ladder in its tights, and is still a licence to ‘strip away’ the mundanity of everyday life and slide into something a bit more comfortable.

The Rocky Horror Show is on at the Theatre Royal, Brighton until Saturday, January 5.

**To book tickets online, click [here:](https://www.atgtickets.com/shows/the-rocky-horror-show/theatre-royal-brighton/?ref=scenemag.co.uk)**