Op-Ed: The Rocky Horror Show Still Hasn't Figured Out Its Callout Problem

My first experience with The Rocky Horror Show was the 2000 Broadway revival. I had no idea what I was getting into, and I really don’t know why my parents took me to see it, besides being encouraging of their teenage son’s theater habit. In that production, which Christopher Ashley directed at the Circle in the Square Theatre, they sold Rocky Horror participation kits, filled with confetti and a newspaper and a pink boa. I remember it being a free-for-all, a vibe befitting of a production that sold stuff for you to ostensibly throw at the stage, and eventually had a rotating assortment of narrators that included Jerry Springer and Sally Jessie Raphael.

Over the last 26 years, I’ve become a Rocky Horror enthusiast. I’m not obsessive, but I appreciate it. Like many, I know the classic callouts. Brad? Asshole. Janet? Slut. Dark storm clouds? Describe your balls: “Heavy, black, and pendulous.” Sam Pinkleton’s new revival at Studio 54 really delivered on the antici—say it—pation I had built up. I’ve seen it twice now. It’s one of my favorite shows of the year.

Pinkleton is one of the smartest directors working. The DIY sensibility that won him a Tony for Oh, Mary! is the perfect fit for Richard O’Brien’s low-fi universe where a transvestite alien wants to fuck as many earthlings as he can. Pinkleton knows that audience participation is part of Rocky Horror, so it surprised me that the production seemed caught off guard by the fact that audience members wanted to shout back at the stage. Two months into their Tony-nominated run, an average Saturday night drifted towards chaos, and no one seemed sure where the line was.

This revival has the asshole and slut and say it baked in—at this point, those improvised lines are better known than any piece of dialogue in O’Brien’s script. It also brings up two audience members to do the “Time Warp.” And Rachel Dratch ended up being the perfect choice to play the Narrator, as she’s a veteran improv comic who can volley any ball tossed in her direction without blinking. There isn’t room for the more obscure callouts, or the specific regional ones, or even the especially dirty ones. It doesn’t come on Janet’s face in this revival, and that’s the issue: it wants the energy of Rocky Horror participation without committing to the cacophony of voices that comes with Rocky Horror participation, leaving the actors to manage it in real time.

When I first saw the production in April, the callouts were subdued, and the audience took the hint when they realized that Luke Evans (Frank-N-Futer) and company were plowing right over them. This was right after the New York Times and New York Post put out stories about how the actors were struggling to deal with audience members who wanted to be especially vocal.

This past weekend was a different story. On Saturday night, shouts rang out from all over Studio 54, from the front orchestra to the rear mezzanine. One woman near us seemed to think she was in her own private showing. It came to a head within two minutes of the first song, “Science Fiction, Double Feature,” when Juliette Lewis looked directly at her and, visibly perturbed, broke the fourth wall to ask her, “Why don’t you sing it instead?”

The woman didn’t exactly get the hint. A talking-to from security at intermission seemed to quiet her down briefly, but when Evans floated down on his moon during the “Floor Show,” she started up again. He stopped, glared, and finally said, “You’re lucky I’m on a moon.” That was a more charitable response than the one from another audience member, who bluntly shouted “Shut up, bitch!” at the disrupter. Evans and much of the audience seemed to delight in that.

The problem at Studio 54 is that a noncommittal stance gets you nowhere. You can’t include some callouts and then get mad when people take that as an indication to continue. They have a character hold up a sign at the beginning that says “Enjoy the show. Don’t be an asshole.” I agree with that sentiment. They also have a note on the website that says, “Choose your call-outs carefully—as this is a Broadway musical, not a midnight showing of the film.” I agree with that, too. But my definition of carefully isn’t the same as someone else’s.

Here’s an idea, free of charge: print a flyer listing the callouts that are welcome and hand it out with every program. Maybe it will help, maybe it won’t. But at least it’s a stance, and with the run now extended through November, the production needs one.

But it’s not just an issue of the production. This is live theater. The people on stage can hear you. As an audience member, you need to be mindful of that. Post-Covid theater etiquette has become a well-documented problem, and the actors shouldn’t have to be the decorum police in addition to doing eight shows a week. Neither should the ushers nor your fellow patrons.

The experience might be about you, but it’s also about the person next to you. So, here’s another idea, free of charge: don’t be a butthead and ruin it for everyone else. After all, giving yourself over to absolute pleasure is easier when everyone agrees on the rules.