By Staff Writer James Mellen III.
I went to The Rocky Horror Picture Show but a boy, and I left a married woman, with my cherry freshly popped and lipstick smeared across my face.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show is the love child of theatre and cinema, the basic concept is a playing of the movie with a shadow cast lip-syncing and acting out the movie.
This year marked the 25th anniversary of the 20 Cent fiction rendition of Rocky Horror, on Saturday October 27 the club hosted an alumni show.
The alumni show included a second shadow cast of UMass Dartmouth alum. Among these alumni were Complete Destruction (the returning host of the annual UMass Dartmouth Drag Show) and the honorable Johnny Perreira.
Upon walking into the auditorium I was asked if I had ever seen Rocky Horror and if you had asked me 20 minutes before that moment what Rocky Horror was about I would have told you: “I think that’s the musical where the guys wear fishnets.”
So needless to say, I was very confused when the student at the front door wrote a V on my forehead with red lipstick.
I then found my seat, and listened to the opening act, senior Tim Costa and his guitar, who was very entertaining to watch.
Rocky started with all of the people with red Vs on their face coming onto the stage.
That was when I learned that the V stands for “virgin.”
We were all given a red balloons called our “cherries,” and were instructed to “blow them to the best of our ability.”
Once the balloons were blown we put them between our legs and popped them.
We were then informed that the cast was missing two characters, and that the cast wanted to give the roles to two of us virgins.
Five of us volunteered for a spot on stage, and we were then told to lip sync to “California Gurls” by Katy Perry to decide which two of us would get a spot on stage.
Another student and I won this once in a lifetime opportunity.
We were brought backstage and told that we would get to play a wife and groom, I couldn’t believe it.
This was the moment I had been dreaming of ever since I was a little girl.
After the on-stage wedding, I was returned to my seat to watch the rest of the musical.
The show lasted a little under two hours, at halftime there was a kissing booth, and the auction of a saxophone.
If you read my synopsis of Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson’s engagement, then you know I am a man of culture and high taste. That being said, Rocky Horror was unlike anything I had ever seen before.
You’re watching a movie, but while you’re watching a movie you’re also watching people on stage act like the people on screen, and you’re listening to the dialogue of the movie, but you’re also listening to plants in the audience’s commentary on the movie.
If that sounds confusing, it’s because it is, while I was backstage preparing for the wedding, I was told that the alum performance would be extra confusing because of the second cast.
At one point during the show I said aloud “I have absolutely no clue what’s going on right now,” and someone in front of me said “Good, that’s how you’re supposed to feel.”
From what I can tell, he was right.
As confused as I was, I was certainly never bored.
This show is proof that you don’t need to know what’s going on to have a good time (you could say that losing my Rocky virginity was a lot like losing my actual virginity).
It seems like the confusion in the show is supposed the represent the sexual confusion of adolescents (especially queer adolescents (queerness is as present in the show as is sex). Which is an interesting thematic device to say the least.
Overall the cast did a great job, I would have to assume that they didn’t practice with the alum too many times. I would give the show 69 out of 5 stars.