Is Third Time the Charm for
The Rocky Horror Show on Broadway?
The Rocky Horror Show bombed in 1975 on Broadway, and returned in 2000 with middling results. Is it a hit on its third try? The critics are divided.
By Robert Nesti
What’s peculiar about The Rocky Horror Show is that it has never truly been a hit on Broadway. Its film version, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, became a sensation in the 1970s and 1980s with midnight screenings at the Waverly Theatre in Greenwich Village. It is a tradition that continues through this day, though only every third Saturday at a theater in the East Village with a live shadow cast. The stage show, though did very poorly in 1975 when a hit LA production was slammed with bad reviews and closed after 45 performances with a cast that included Tim Curry as Dr. Frank-N-Furter and Meat Loaf as Eddie and Dr. Scott. The show also featured Richard O’Brien, who wrote the book, music and lyrics as Riff-Raff. Upon closing Curry recalled to the New York Times that when checking out of the Algonquin Hotel, where he was staying during the run, he couldn’t pay his bill. “The manager was incredible and said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Curry. We know that you’ll be back — on Broadway, in New York,” he told the New York Times. Which was super encouraging and so generous. The next time I was in New York, I went in there and counted out the money in $5 bills.”
At the same time, its London production, which premiered in 1973, was a mammoth hit, running some seven years and amassing nearly 3000 performances. The film version was a box office failure when it opened in 1975, but quickly gained cult status through midnight screenings in urban centers that started the following year. That established the property’s brand and subsequent stage productions throughout the world. It returned to New York City in 2000 for a more respectable 437-performance run in a revival at Circle in the Square that starred Tom Hewitt, Raul Esparza, Joan Jett, Jarrod Emick, and Lea DeLaria; but that too did not earn back its investments.
Its current revival at Studio 54 is a limited run (through July 19) and sold well during its preview period. One very good reason for its strong sales is that it marks the Broadway debut of out Hollywood hunk Luke Evans, who surprised many with his vocal chops and impressive delivery. Fans, though, know of his musical theater cred since his early credits was as an ensemble member in numerous West End musicals. Joining him in the production, directed by Sam Pinkleton, are Rachel Dratch, Stephanie Hsu, Andrew Durand, Amber Gray, Juliette Lewis, Harvey Guillén, Josh Rivera, and Michaela Jaé Rodriguez. It opened on Thursday, April 23 in time for Tony consideration. It will likely be nominated for Best Revival, and Evans has a strong chance for a nod as Best Actor in a Musical (though it is not guaranteed given a tight field of nominees). The critics were either thrilled to do the Time Warp again or unimpressed with this attempt to make this transgressive musical relevant again.
Here are a sample of the reviews:
Positive: 9
Mixed: 6
Negative: 3
Adam Feldman · Time Out New York ★★★★
Feldman awarded four stars and hailed the show as deliriously warped and timely, calling the Roundabout revival an invitation to pleasure that is awfully hard to resist. He praised Luke Evans as a magnetic Frank-N-Furter and called the cast perhaps the starriest Broadway ensemble of the season — with everyone totally committed to the gleeful chaos. The result, he concluded, is an exuberant production that fully earns its cult credentials.
Helen Shaw · The New York Times
Shaw was delighted to see audiences dancing along as if Studio 54 were still a nightclub. She raved that Evans reimagines Frank not as a Tim Curry imitator but as the show’s romantic Heathcliff — abandoned by his great loves, all dead or disappointing — and that his magnetism is so powerful Pinkleton can essentially aim him at the audience and fire him like a cannon. A designated Critics’ Pick: “The point of ‘Rocky Horror’ is to lose control. C’mon, let’s do it again.”
Greg Evans · Deadline Hollywood
Deadline called the revival a much-welcome time warp and first-rate presentation, praising Evans, Rachel Dratch as a droll narrator with sharp audience repartee, Andrew Durand’s uptight-until-he’s-not Brad, and Stephanie Hsu’s timid-until-she’s-not Janet. The production was praised for finding a satisfying middle ground on audience participation. Conclusion: “Roundabout has gifted us a wonderful time warp, and we’d be assholes not to stay for the night.”
Dave Quinn · People
Quinn acknowledged the show as one of the most gleefully subversive pieces of musical theater ever written, and praised the starry production for leaning into campy pleasures with strong performances and visual flair. But he felt the production ultimately lacked the element of transgressive danger that has always been the show’s lifeblood — the sense that anything could genuinely happen.
Thom Geier · CultureSauce ★★★
Geier gave three stars and found the show something almost quaint — a rock musical that once seemed an outrageous one-finger salute to traditional mores but now registers more as nostalgia than defiance. He praised Evans for a striking Frank who towers in four-inch heels but comes across as sweet rather than the walking provocateur Tim Curry embodied. His bottom line: “Doing the Time Warp, again, is more an act of nostalgia than defiance.”
Jonathan Mandell · New York Theater
Mandell situated the production as the latest in a quartet of campy Broadway musicals this month functioning as acts of resistance against a retrogressively anti-queer world — alongside Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Titanique, and Schmigadoon! He praised the stellar cast and inventive staging but concluded the production cannot measure up to the participatory midnight-movie cult experience that fans spent decades performing alongside on screen.
Zachary Stewart · TheaterMania
TheaterMania’s review, headlined “Too-Tame Broadway Revival,” acknowledged individual performance strengths — Hsu endowing Janet with feral energy, Guillén wringing unexpected humor from every line, Gray as a deliciously rancid Riff Raff, Lewis perfectly priming the audience. But director Pinkleton was found only partially successful in bridging the gap between this licentious 1970s rock musical and a Broadway that feels increasingly forbidding to outsiders.
Frank Rizzo · Variety
Rizzo was the most pointed detractor, declaring the Roundabout revival “mostly effortful, maddening and finally exhausting.” He argued that while diehard fans in costume might find comfort in the liturgical rituals of a bygone counter-culture, newcomers might wonder what all the fuss is about. He also criticized the production design and found Pinkleton’s razor-sharp timing — so present in Oh, Mary! — absent here.
Matthew Wexler · 1 Minute Critic
Wexler headlined his notice “Luke Evans goes for it. But ‘The Rocky Horror Show’ isn’t sure what it’s going for.” He found the production kept audiences on “a short leash, even if it’s studded leather,” with the pre-show “Don’t be an asshole” warning setting a tone that curbed rather than channeled the show’s anarchic tradition. Dratch was praised for nimble improv instincts with the audience, and Evans was credited with bringing genuine energy to Frank — but the varying degrees of stage experience in the broader cast, he wrote, gave the production an adult-learner college vibe at odds with what Broadway audiences expect.
David Cote · Cote Notices (Substack)
Cote titled his enthusiastic notice “Our Lust Is So Sincere” and called himself a stage virgin at the show — having seen the film at midnight screenings in Cambridge in 1986 but never the live version — until this production made him a true believer. He praised Pinkleton for crafting a “freshly demented and chaotically erotic” trash-vaudeville aesthetic that evokes burlesque, downtown sex clubs, and Halloween haunted houses in equal measure. He found Leigh Bowery’s spirit in the black-clad ensemble members who manipulate set pieces like Kabuki kurogo, and called Lewis’s Manson Family fervor in the opening number an immediate invitation to join her cult.
Dalton Ross · Entertainment Weekly
Ross gave the revival a B+ and titled his review “Luke Evans Was Born to Wear Fishnets on Broadway,” arguing that your enjoyment will depend greatly on what personal history you bring into the theater. He was lavish in praise of Evans — “you simply can’t take your eyes off of him,” not just for the iconic corset-and-fishnets look but for the sheer command he brings to every scene. Costume designer David I. Reynoso was singled out for a white vinyl naughty-nurse-meets-dominatrix outfit in the laboratory sequence. A measured mixed-positive, with the audience participation question identified as the production’s central unresolved tension.
Richard Lawson · The Guardian
Lawson’s notice was designated a Critics’ Pick and offered an intriguingly double-edged positive: he argued that the show hasn’t entirely worked out how to handle audience interaction — and that this unresolved tension is actually a feature rather than a bug. A show that aspires to be a sacred relic risks calcification; the tussle between stage and seats, the destabilizing uncertainty of whether the audience will play along, is itself what makes Rocky Horror live. The production earns its place through the energy it generates rather than despite its imperfections.
Johnny Oleksinski · New York Post
Oleksinski headlined his notice “Killer Performances, but Dammit Janet, Make It More Fun” — an apt summary of a mixed response. He found much to like: the Fritz Lang-inspired metallic mannequins, the Jim Steinman music-video castle set, and two performances he called knockouts — Evans and Hsu. But when the plot thins in Act 2 and the audience falls largely silent, he found himself craving “something more, more, more,” underscoring the core challenge any Rocky Horror stage revival must face: the participatory tradition born from midnight screenings is notoriously difficult to replicate in a Broadway house.
Michael Sommers · New York Stage Review ★★
Sommers (two stars) titled his notice “Roundabout Rolls Out a Not So Hot Patootie” and admitted that the morning after, it was difficult to recall much to remark upon. He found the production respectful rather than revelatory, with a set more functional than fabulous, and felt Pinkleton’s design team accentuated the campy sci-fi elements over the gothic horror mockery at the show’s core. The participatory elements were “tolerated rather than encouraged,” with audience call-outs “scattered and sporadic.” The cast was deemed capable rather than exceptional.
Austin Fimmano · New York Theatre Guide
Fimmano’s upbeat notice declared that “from the moment Luke Evans makes his grand entrance, it’s clear he was born for the role.” He praised the scenic collective dots for castle sets that are “unapologetically lavish,” especially the campy, overstuffed stairway entrance hall where “The Time Warp” is performed. Durand and Hsu were singled out as “the Brad and Janet of a new generation” — nailing their simpering 1950s personas in Act 1 and delivering on the transformations that follow. A strong positive overall.
James Kleinmann · The Queer Review ★★★★★
Kleinmann awarded five stars and opened by declaring the production “queerer than ever and horny AF.” Writing from the perspective of a lifelong Rocky Horror devotee who was nonetheless a stage virgin until opening night, he argued that Pinkleton and his creative team crafted the production with both love and fearless inventiveness. Lewis was called entrancing in the opening number, her voice “playfully characterful, yet soulful.” The five-star verdict was unequivocal: this is the revival the property has been waiting for.
Kobi Kassal · Theatrely
Kassal titled his notice “A Burst of Vibrant Queer Joy” and brought to it the perspective of someone who had seen Pinkleton’s earlier La Cage aux Folles at Pasadena Playhouse — a production that, he wrote, threw a classic musical in the oven and watched it explode in rainbow sparkles. He found much of the same energy here. Evans was praised for commanding the stage from his first entrance, representing what unapologetic queerness means in 2026. Durand and Hsu were called “funny, vibrant and sensuous in the best way,” and he wanted Amber Gray’s Riff Raff paired with Juliette Lewis’s raspy, ferocious Magenta to kidnap him any day of the week.
Robert Hofler · The Wrap
Hofler titled his notice “A Fun Revival Pushes the Envelope, as Well as Somebody’s Rear-End” — a reference to a genuinely transgressive Frank-Brad moment that generated audible audience shock and joy, and which Hofler held up as evidence of what the production is capable of when it commits fully to O’Brien’s license. He found the film-era callback shout-outs “deeply contrived in 2026” outside a midnight movie context, but was more generous to the production’s live-theatre transgressions, suggesting the revival works best when it leans into the flesh-and-blood shock value the filmed version cannot provide.
Read the full review.