Rocky Horror Show
★★★★☆ Naughty
Edinburgh Playhouse: Tue 6 – Sat 10 Jan 2026
Review by Thom Dibdin
Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show returns in good form to the Playhouse where it is playing all week to Saturday, with Jason Donovan reliving his role as Frank N Furter and Jackie Clune as a particularly pithy Narrator.
It’s 19 years since director Christopher Luscombe’s production brought innocents Brad and Janet into the Frank N Furter’s sordid orbit in this outrageous rock’n’roll spoof of Fifties sci-fi and horror B-movies. The current cast and band continue to do the production proud, with some fine performances that should please Rocky Horror veterans and virgins alike.
James Bisp and Haley Flaherty. Pic David Freeman
Laura Bird sets it on its high-flying trajectory with a powerful take on the show-opening, front-of-curtain turn as the Usherette, toying with her audience as she announces the Science Fiction Double Feature.
Bird, who returns as Magenta, sets up a frisson of anticipation. Her full-toned singing and crystal clear delivery ensuring that all the nuances and comedic elements of the number crackle around the auditorium.
It is equaled with the arrival of Brad and Janet. Hot from their friends’ wedding, they are soon billing and cooing and proposing marriage on their journey to see their friend Dr Scott. James Bisp and Haley Flaherty create quite the two-dimensional, clean-cut couple, to go with the cartoon-like set.
precision
One missed turn, a flat tire and a rainstorm later, amidst much introductory explanation from the Narrator, has them winkled out of their white picket fence normality and standing dripping on the doorstep of a spooky old mansion, hoping just to use the phone…
If the sound balance has by now become a little muffled, the precision of the performances remains. The denizens of the mansion drive the story effortlessly into a three dimensional realm of sexual tension.
Morgan Jackson, Daisy Steere and Edward Bullingham. Pic: David Freeman.
Bird continues to impress as maidservant Magenta, with Ryan Carter-Wilson upping the creepiness stakes as her brother, Riff Raff, and Daisy Steere adding an extra frisson of ambiguity as the be-bobbed and bouncy piece of colour, the groupie Columbia.
With a strong cohort of backing Phantoms, their gothic darkness quickly undresses the straight couple down to their bright white unmentionables, and has them doing the Time Warp across set designer Hugh Durrant’s dark mansion, dotted with the stuffed heads of extinct animals.
Clune’s Narrator is a particular treat here. Her put-downs and repartee with the audience in the now-traditional shout outs and heckles might be far too well honed to be sparkly new, but she delivers them as if they were just coming into her head. And her knowing delivery is perfect for the show’s celebration of difference and non-heteronormative narratives.
tight-as-a-corset band
Just as it all begins to lift off, with MD Adam Smith’s tight-as-a-corset band leading from the top, the more enthusiastic audience members on their feet and doing the pelvic thrust, when out of the darkness and into Nick Richings’ jaggy and quite splendiferous lighting scheme, comes our host.
Here, reprising a role he first took on for the show’s 25th anniversary tour, is Mr Jason Donovan as Frank N Furter, the “sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania”, his full set of fishnets, corsets and plump pearl necklace hidden beneath a majestic vamp-ish and Vampire-ish high-collared black cloak.
Jason Donovan. Pic Rocky Horror Show
It is the perfect entrance. Music, lighting, set, company and choreography all seeking – and succeeding – to put him up there on his pedestal, cloaked in darkness and light.
And then… Well, how to say this, it all becomes a bit normal. The company and band continue to be brilliant; as exciting interpreters of the show as any. The staging is as on-point as it should be. Perhaps the tour sound technician has yet to get the balance of the notoriously tricky Playhouse auditorium, but that is not the issue.
The issue is Donovan’s interpretation of Frank N Furter. Oh yes he can still thrust his pelvis and walk the walk, but that anniversary tour was in 1998. His current Frank is an old lush, a jaded queen and faded roué, not the sex-hungry and lascivious libertine as the role is written.
it sort of works
To be fair it sort of works as a concept, fitting with the whole idea that Frank has overstepped his role with his fellow Transylvanian aliens, first in his creation of tearaway rocker Eddie and then bronzed muscle-god Rocky.
But he simply isn’t believable as the lust-worthy sex object who has stolen Columbia’s heart and easily debauches both Janet and Brad, turning their initial horror into lust for more. Worse, though, too many of his words are lost. Even a handheld mike doesn’t help. If Rocky veterans are reacting to the lines they know are being sung, not what they hear, where does that leave the virgins?
Ryan Carter-Wilson and Laura Bird. Pic David Freeman
Still, Donovan has the presence to keep it going, just not on the five star route it might have been. There are great turns from a lithe Morgan Jackson as Rocky, and a more studied Edward Bullingham as Eddie (and later Dr Scott), with a great take on Hot Patootie – Bless My Soul.
There is so much to like here that any faltering steps from Mr Donovan can be forgiven. Cast, band and creatives combine to bring a touring production that reminds you exactly why folk come time, and again to do the Time Warp. And why the Rocky Horror Show fully deserves the epithet of “legendary”.
Running time: Two hours (including one interval).
Edinburgh Playhouse, 18 – 22 Greenside Place, EH1 3AA.
Tuesday 6 – Saturday 10 Jan 2026
Tue – Thur: 8pm; Fri/Sat: 5pm & 8.30pm.
Tickets and details: Book here.
ENDS
