Not a Hit, but a Swing and a Miss!

Despite my determined effort to turn a week filled with sad news around, in the end, it didn’t happen. Jon Hayenga ... aka ...thespian15 and I met up for a 2pm matinee of the stage musical version of “The Rocky Horror Show”. Despite leaving 45 minutes early, I was 40 minutes late. (And I hate being late!!) Prior to driving to St Paul, I didn’t know that sections of Interstate 94 and Interstate 35 were closed this weekend for repairs. Those are the main North/South and East/West arteries in the Twin Cities. Surface streets held bumper to bumper traffic, as the Minnesota Wild Hockey team had a preseason game and Minnesota’s professional soccer team had a game as well.

Sad to say, I mostly didn’t enjoy the performance of “The Rocky Horror Show”. It wasn’t that the cast was bad; they were good singers, capable actors; but, it wasn’t funny, campy, particularly original or edgy. For me, its failure was due to a questionable casting choice at its core and it sabotaged the show. To cast a petite, buff cisgender woman as the transvestite Frank-n-furter robbed the show of its queer energy, sexual menace ... the subversive spirit at its core... The very reasons the film remains such a hit. It felt wrong and I couldn’t get past it. I spent most of the second act trying to figure out what the hell was going on ... The onstage band was outstanding; but, it didn’t help that the balance between the band and singers was off; if you didn’t already knows the lyrics, good luck.

I didn’t come to this show as one of the legions of fans who attended weekly midnight showings of the cult film; but, I did see the 2000 Broadway revival of this musical which included Dick Cavett (narrator); Lea DeLaria (Eddie); Jarrod Emmick (Brad); Alice Ripley (Janet) Daphne Ruben Vega (Magenta); Raul Esparza (Riff Raff); Joan Jett (Columbia) and the sexy Tom Hewitt as Frank-n-Furter. For me, that was the standard. The Broadway production got all of the elements right. Sue me; I made comparisons.

The only positive of the afternoon was spending time with Jon. To be completely fair, the 80 year old lady next to me was singing every single lyric of the show; but no patrons danced to the Time Warp or shouted out lines from the audience! The bows were telling. As the cast was taking their bows, patrons were in the aisle exiting and there was no standing ovation. In a decade of attending 6-8 shows a year in the Twin Cities, that was the first time I’d seen that happen. This production was not a hit; but a swing and a miss!

Epilogue: When I got home at 6:30pm, I fed Georgie and took him out. I was about to go two-stepping as I do every Sunday night when I received a text from Casey in Houston. The text said “Call me immediately”, so I did. Casey said, "sit down and take a deep breath." The news? My ex David is being treated for prostate and bladder cancer. He began chemo this week. The cancer has not metastasized, so there is good reason to believe he’ll survive it. I simultaneously received a text that my sister’s ex-father-in-law (my niece's grandfather) died yesterday after a long battle with Huntington’s disease. Such is life, hit and miss ...