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Ah but for theatrics, the quest for adventure, soul testing, and the infliction of incurable curiosity, would I be compelled to go way out of my comfort zone.   “Cover your ears sometimes, your eyes the rest of the time,” was the caution label stamped upon us by a well supportive friend base.  My Facebook friends were shocked and amused that I would go to see Rocky Horror http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=121316101247480.

My reputation for high morals, my mind pollution crusade and the new website http://www.cleanupourlanguage.com/ that I started are more extensive than I realized.  Even director Christopher Cook gave me a graphic heads up on what to expect in Rocky Horror when I called in for reservations, and he spoke to me personally afterwards. 

I was so apprehensive going in that I felt like I was being initiated in some massive orgy.  But the respect and the support and encouragement that Cindy and I received from our friends was truly gratifying.  I thank you all for this, especially Chris Carlson for checking on us before, throughout, and after the show. 

This wasn’t that hard to take at all.  I’ve seen much worse vulgarity and graphic sexual content.  I’ve been to X rated movies and strip clubs in San Diege and girls dancing on tables in a Tijuana bar.  This is theater.  The venue was clear.  It was graphic transsexual sex, horror, and slapstick comedy.  For the nature of the content of the show, and given that this is a midnight show, it was really presented in a qualified and dignified way.  The graphicness of the sexual content was not a kind of in your face leudeness for the sake of just being crude.  There was only minimal mild profanity in the script.  The call outs in the audience were very vulgar but these were highly scripted repetitive verbalisms including a few f-bombs but not an artillery.   I have no problem with that in this venue.  It is not public nor does it try to establish a norm or a standard of demorality socially.

Theatrically as a performance I must say Rocky Horror was very good; very high entertainment value; the vocals were absolutely superb, all of them.  I was in awe.  The sound tech was very good, the balance of instrumental and vocal better than most.  Energy was high.  The musical numbers were absolutely powerful, truly outstanding.  The audience was brought into the party at the outset.  The welcoming crew really treated the audience very well.  Several people including Christopher Cook suggested that we don't admit that we are first timers to the show!  They bring you on stage and make you do orgasmic imitations of animals.  People were heavily applauded for making animal sounds.  They teach the audience a basic dance step to do on cue a couple of times during the show so that everyone in the audience gets to dance in the show.  How fun is that?  And the only way you can do it wrong is not to do it at all.   

The call-outs were perfectly timed funny one-liners relevant to the script by cast members in the audience while actors on stage remained in charactor oblivious to the call outs.  Some of the one-liners are play on words having nothing to do with the script.  It is fast moving and funny.  Fabulous directing made it work well, though perhaps overdone and I think the band might not have been hearing all of the call outs because they came in on top of a few of them but it was easy to understand the words both from the stage and from the call outs in the audience. 

No one got rowdy or in any way out of hand.  It was a good experience, one that I am proud that I had, the best part being Chris Carlson and the good friends who took me by the hand because it would have taken a lot more than a ten foot pole for me to touch Rocky Horror for its content alone.  But the staging, the directing, the acting, choreography, all of those things that make theater magic were exceptional in this enormously popular show.