Broadway’s “Rocky Horror Show” cast paid tribute to Tim Curry at curtain call Wednesday night following his death at 80.
The British actor, who died Tuesday, originated the role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the 1973 London theater production and the 1975 cult-classic film “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” At Studio 54, actor Paul Soileau, who currently plays Frank, addressed the standing audience with an emotional speech about the man who created his part.
“The way Frank-N-Furter survives is that he finds vessels and he goes into them, and he takes them over, and he keeps moving and moving all around,” Soileau said to the crowd. “But if you trace it all back, 53 years ago there’s one home and one vessel; one mothership that Frank-N-Furter can actually call home. And it’s Tim Curry.”
The audience broke into sustained applause and chanted “Tim! Tim! Tim!” according to witnesses at the Wednesday performance. Soileau continued by tracing the character’s creation back to its source.
“[Writer and composer] Richard O’Brien laid a piece of paper in front of Tim Curry with ingredients on it. And he took all of those ingredients, and he created this beast that everyone found something within and could see a piece of themself inside of it,” he said.
“Just as Richard O’Brien created ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ to find something more about himself, you can also say that Tim Curry created Frank-N-Furter to express and find something deeper about himself. And somehow it resonated for this long with this many people in this room here right now.”
Soileau then directly challenged a common detail in remembrances of the actor. “Obituaries always say that he didn’t have children. And that’s bulls–t, because he has so many children in this world,” he fired back. “Tim Curry has more family than I think any of us could ever imagine.”
The actor called onto the stage Tony Award nominee Luke Evans, who was the first Frank in this Broadway revival, and Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears, who is scheduled to take over the role starting Sept. 11. The full cast, including “Saturday Night Live” veteran Rachel Dratch, joined the three performers who have played the “sweet transvestite” for a group rendition of “I’m Going Home.”
In the lobby at Studio 54, a memorial photograph of Curry as Frank sat surrounded by electric candles. Curry himself had played the role on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre in 1975.
Jim Sharman, who directed both the original London production and the film, shared his own tribute from Australia. “He was a unique talent, a lovely person and a tough cookie,” Sharman said. “Lipstick traces of him remain in the movies that will outlive him.”
In the viral moment that sparked the global phenomenon, Curry’s magnetic, corseted performance as the pansexual mad scientist from Transsexual, Transylvania turned a low-budget rock musical into a decades-running midnight-movie ritual. His slinking delivery of “Sweet Transvestite” and commanding presence in the laboratory creation scene made Frank-N-Furter an enduring icon of sexual liberation and camp excess. The 1975 film adaptation, in which Curry starred alongside Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick, became the longest-running theatrical release in history as audiences returned repeatedly in costume, armed with props and scripted callbacks.
That midnight-screening culture eventually spawned licensed audience-participation productions, regional stagings, and finally this Broadway revival, each new Frank performer working in the shadow of Curry’s definitive creation. The current production at Studio 54, which opened last year, has rotated multiple actors through the role in a nod to the character’s shape-shifting essence.
Jake Shears will step into the stilettos as Frank-N-Furter on Sept. 11 at Studio 54.