Betting on ‘Rocky’ Finding New ‘Horror’ on the Stage

“Don’t dream it, be it.”

That’s the message of “The Rocky Horror Show,” capsulized in one line of dialogue in both the movie and play versions of the show.

It is also the message that for the past 16 years has made audiences flock to the screenings dressed up as the characters in the show: the transsexual alien, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a mad scientist who favors lacy black corsets, sequins and high heels; Frank-N-Furter’s blond, well-muscled creation, Rocky; the virgin, Janet, and her nerdish boyfriend, Brad, who stumble on Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s castle when their car breaks down on a dark and stormy night, and a host of others, including a bizarre butler named Riff Raff.

The movie version of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is the most successful midnight movie of all time. It is still running at the Ken Cinema on Friday and Saturday nights at midnight, where it has run for eight years and will continue to do so indefinitely, according to Steve Russell, who manages the Ken and the other San Diego Landmark Theatres. Russell said the movie typically brings in 100 customers a night.

On Wednesday, the San Diego Repertory Theatre will open the play version of “The Rocky Horror Show” for a run through June 1 at the 550-seat Lyceum Stage.

The question is, will the play, which predated the movie version by two years (opening in London in 1973), prove as popular as the movie?

“The Rocky Horror Show” just concluded a six-month run at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, D.C., April 21. It was their longest running show and Monday won the Helen Hayes award for outstanding resident musical. It also made money, but “not tons,” said the Woolly Mammoth’s producing associate Nancy Hensley. It was an expensive show to run, given a large cast of more than a dozen, live music and extravagant costumes. And the Persian Gulf War didn’t help business, even though they sold out a 140-seat house on weekends and filled the house to 70-80% capacity on weekday nights.

Still, the movie connection helped.

“The movie was an attraction and people familiar with it came for that reason,” Hensley said. “But there were also subscribers who may not have been familiar with it.”

The San Diego Rep plans to reach out to that movie audience by sponsoring a talk by local film student Joe Ferrelli, 27, who discovered the movie in 1980 when he was a teen-ager living in Buffalo, N.Y. Ferrelli will talk to San Diego Repertory Theatre subscribers about the show as a cult film May 13 at 7 p.m. in the Lyceum.

Ferrelli was one of the people who participated in another “Rocky” phenomenon back in Buffalo--he dressed up as Rocky, and later Janet, and stood in front of the screen reciting the script of the movie-in-progress to the audience, who yelled back in response.

The Ken still arranges for a cast of about 10 to perform the movie while it’s running. But out of concern for possible injury to those performers and to its screen, the Ken has phased out another “Rocky” tradition in which audience members came with props, squirting squirt guns in the scene where it rains, throwing rice in the wedding scene, throwing toast when Dr. Frank-N-Furter proposes a toast and throwing Scott toilet paper when Brad says, “Great Scott!” on seeing his old teacher, Everett Scott.

Like the Ken, the San Diego Rep won’t allow anything to be thrown. The Woolly Mammoth did however, selling its own packet of props--flashlights, confetti, foam toast. It was messy, but they encouraged it anyway, said Hensley of the Woolly Mammoth.

“It was a good outlet for teen-agers,” Ferrelli recalled, sitting in an office at the Ken. “It was something to do on a Friday and Saturday night when I was too young to go to bars.”

Over the years, too, the show became “a real galvanizer for a certain group of people who felt they didn’t fit in in a certain way,” noted Jan Klingelhofer, vice president of film buying for Landmark.

Ferrelli agrees.

“For a lot of teen-agers it was an early coming out of the closet kind of thing. You could dress up and it was acceptable.”

PROGRAM NOTES: It’s official: As was predicted in this column weeks ago, the Old Globe has announced that it will produce the West Coast premiere of “Forever Plaid” July 18-Aug. 25 on the main stage. . . .

Making every moment count: The Ensemble Arts Theatre is not wasting an evening of time at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company’s small space. From Thursday night through the Sunday matinee, the company continues with its Gaslamp co-production of the American premiere of “Lady Macbeth.” On every dark night, from Sunday night to Wednesday night, Ensemble Arts is staging the American premiere of “Threeplay,” a story by psychiatrist, director and actor Stavros Prineas about a woman trying to choose between two men. . . .

The North Coast Repertory Theatre will substitute Neil Simon’s “The Good Doctor” for “I’m Not Rappaport” in its June 8-July 27 slot. . . .

Somebody notices: The Performing Arts Theatre of the Handicapped in Carlsbad, a small, homeless, struggling company which showcases the work of performers with disabilities, receives the Distinguished Service Award of the National Council on Communicative Disorders today at the 10th annual NCCD Communication Awards ceremony at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. . . .

And coming up: The San Diego-based National Theater for Children is producing “The Wizard of Oz” at the Spreckels Theatre today and Friday at 10 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. Meanwhile, Starlight Musical Theatre has added a morning performance of its own upcoming production of “The Wizard of Oz” for schoolchildren May 28. The show will run from 10 a.m. to noon. Afterward, the children will be shown how the Wicked Witch flies and how the wizard manages his special effects. . . .

The performance art duo, (THE) composed of UC San Diego professors Ed Harkins, trumpeter, and Philip Larson, baritone, will present new works in an evening described as “humor and satire” Saturday at 8 p.m. at Mandeville Auditorium on the UCSD campus. . . .

NewWorks Theatre will present rehearsed readings of six new plays by local authors May 19-June 24 at the Horton Park Plaza Hotel.