The Rocky Horror Show

The Rocky Horror Show is a rock musical by Richard O'Brien, who wrote the book, the music and the lyrics himself. It is a comic salute to vintage science-fiction and horror B movies. A prim, newly engaged couple, Brad and Janet, break down on a stormy night and knock at the door of a castle. Their host is Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a cross-dressing scientist from another planet, and the night upends everything the pair believed about themselves.

O'Brien wrote the show in London in the early 1970s, between acting jobs. It is an original story, not an adaptation: the 1975 movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show came later and was made from the stage musical. This Roundabout Theatre Company production at Studio 54 is the third time the show has played Broadway. It opened on April 23, 2026, and received nine Tony nominations.

The evening is framed as a night at the movies. An Usherette from a run-down movie theater opens with a tribute to old sci-fi double features, and a Narrator, sometimes called the Criminologist, stands outside the action and comments on it as it unfolds.

Brad Majors and Janet Weiss get engaged right after a friend's wedding. On their way to see Dr. Everett Scott, their old science tutor, they get a flat tire in a storm and walk to a nearby castle to borrow a phone. The household (Riff Raff, a hunchbacked butler; his sister Magenta, the maid; and Columbia, a groupie who lives there) welcomes them with a dance before Frank-N-Furter makes his entrance. Soon the soaked pair, stripped to their underwear, follow him to his lab.

There Frank brings his own creation to life: Rocky, a muscle-bound man he has built. The celebration is cut short by Eddie, a rock-and-roll delivery boy and an old flame of both Frank and Columbia, who rides a motorcycle straight out of a freezer. Some of Eddie's brain went into Rocky, and Frank kills him. The guests are sent to separate bedrooms.

The second act opens as a bedroom farce played in the dark. Frank slips into Janet's room pretending to be Brad, then into Brad's room pretending to be Janet. Janet later finds Rocky hiding in the lab and seduces him, and when Brad sees the two of them on a monitor, he is deeply hurt. Then Dr. Scott rolls in, looking for his missing nephew, and the nephew is Eddie. Frank pins his guests to the floor, the household reveals itself as a crew of aliens far from their own planet, and Frank dresses everyone in lingerie for a cabaret floor show.

O'Brien built the score from vintage rock and roll and the glam rock that was in fashion when he wrote it. Richard Hartley, O'Brien's music partner, is credited with the original orchestrations. For this revival, Kris Kukul is music supervisor and music director and also provides the orchestrations.

A few numbers to know:

• "Science Fiction/Double Feature" opens the evening as a love letter to old B movies; in this production the actor who plays Magenta sings it as the Usherette.
• "Dammit Janet" is the proposal, a duet for Brad and Janet.
• "Time Warp" is the household's welcome dance; since a 1990 revision of the script it comes before Frank's entrance.
• "Sweet Transvestite" is that entrance, Frank introducing himself to the startled couple.
• "Hot Patootie - Bless My Soul" is Eddie's burst of old-school rock as he roars out of the freezer.
• "Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me" is Janet's second-act song of discovery, with Magenta and Columbia.

For Frank's song to his new creation, the stage script now uses the film's "I Can Make You a Man" in place of the original Charles Atlas number. In the second act, Frank's cabaret floor show moves through "Rose Tint My World" and "Don't Dream It, Be It" into "Wild and Untamed Thing."

The design team dressed the whole of Studio 54, lobby and auditorium included, not just the stage. Ductwork snakes through the house, starting behind the audience, as though the building itself were breathing life into the show. Green bulbs glow in the chandeliers, and costumed skeletons and ghostly figures sit around the room, among them a showgirl perched on a piano at the rear.

The look is homemade on purpose: tinsel, strings of lights, mannequins, silver spray paint, seats wrapped in foil and upside-down trash cans used as pedestals. Silver-painted potted plants in the lobby nod to the Studio 54 nightclub of the 1970s, and film fans can hunt for hidden references such as pink rubber gloves and red lips in the restrooms. The curtains are a low-cost black metallic velour that shifts color under the lights, and Eddie's freezer holds real breakfast food.

Reynoso's costumes share the do-it-yourself spirit. Frank's gown includes ribbons cut from trash bags, and green runs through the wardrobe as a nod to Frank's green lab coat in the 1975 film. The Narrator's blazer is printed with B-movie images, King Kong and the Bride of Frankenstein among them. Eddie's jacket carries the birth and death dates of Meat Loaf, who played Eddie and Dr. Scott in Los Angeles and on Broadway in the 1970s. One actor plays both Eddie and Dr. Scott, and an ensemble of Phantoms fills out the company.

O'Brien's working title was They Came from Denton High. The musical premiered on June 19, 1973, at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, a 63-seat experimental studio in Sloane Square, Chelsea. Jim Sharman directed and Michael White produced. Tim Curry created Frank-N-Furter, giving him an exaggerated upper-class English accent rather than playing a simple drag act, and O'Brien played Riff Raff. The show moved to the Chelsea Classic Cinema, then the King's Road Theatre, and finally the Comedy Theatre, where it was first split into two acts in 1979. The original London run closed in 1980 after 2,960 performances.

The American story began in Los Angeles in 1974, when Lou Adler presented the musical at the Roxy Theatre with Curry as Frank. Adler brought the Los Angeles company to the Belasco Theatre on Broadway, with O'Brien himself as Riff Raff. It opened on March 10, 1975, shortly before the film's release, and closed on April 5 after 45 performances.

The film starred Curry and O'Brien, with Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick as Janet and Brad. It has the longest-running theatrical release in film history, and its screenings are where the custom of shouting back at the screen and dressing as the characters took hold. A television remake followed in 2016, and Linus O'Brien, the author's son, directed the documentary Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror.

Broadway's second production, a revival at Circle in the Square directed by Christopher Ashley, opened on November 15, 2000, and ran until January 6, 2002, for 437 performances. Tom Hewitt was Frank, with Alice Ripley, Raúl Esparza, Joan Jett and Daphne Rubin-Vega in the company, and celebrity guests such as Penn & Teller and Jerry Springer took turns as the Narrator. Elsewhere, the show has been staged on six continents and has toured the UK eight times. A 2011 Royal Mail stamp set honoring eight British musicals included it, and it was revived in the West End in 2023, the 50th anniversary of the London premiere.

Roundabout announced this revival on October 29, 2025, with Luke Evans as Frank-N-Furter and Sam Pinkleton directing. The opening company also included Stephanie Hsu, Andrew Durand, Amber Gray, Juliette Lewis, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Josh Rivera, Harvey Guillén and Rachel Dratch. Previews began on March 26, 2026. By October 2026, the limited engagement had been extended three times. In the week ending June 28, 2026, it broke the box-office record for Studio 54, becoming the top-grossing show in the building's history. A Broadway cast recording with the opening-night company was announced on August 25, 2026.

Several principals left over the summer of 2026, and Jake Shears took over as Frank-N-Furter on September 11, 2026. As of October 2026, Shears plays Frank, with Lorna Courtney as Janet, Kevin McHale as Brad, Amber Gray as Riff Raff, Sherie Rene Scott as Magenta, Valentina as Columbia, Jimin Moon as Rocky, George Salazar as Eddie and Dr. Scott, and Rachel Dratch as the Narrator. Rosie O'Donnell was booked as a guest Narrator from October 6 to 18, 2026, while Dratch took a short leave.