The Rocky Horror Show

The Rocky Horror Show strands a newly engaged couple at the door of a castle on a wet night and hands them over to Frank-N-Furter, a scientist from another planet with a creation to unveil and no interest in anyone's plans for the evening. It is a rock musical assembled out of old horror pictures.

Brad and Janet arrive respectable and do not leave that way. Inside, a household of servants and hangers-on is preparing for the unveiling of Rocky, a man built to order, and the couple's certainties come apart one at a time over a single night. The score moves between doo-wop pastiche, glam stomp and torch ballad, with numbers such as Time Warp and Sweet Transvestite carrying the story rather than pausing it.

Richard O'Brien wrote the book, music and lyrics, and the show first reached the stage in 1973 as an affectionate raid on the science fiction and horror B-pictures of the preceding decades, filtered through glam rock. It has been staged more or less continuously ever since and translated into around twenty languages, and the stage version came before the film that made it famous.

The tone is knowing without being cold: the show enjoys its own silliness and expects the audience to enjoy it too. It has built a participatory culture around itself, with audiences turning up in costume and answering the stage back, which gives performances an unusual charge for a scripted musical. Underneath the camp there is a real melancholy about desire and belonging.

It rewards anyone who likes a musical that misbehaves — loud, filthy-minded, warm-hearted and faster than it looks. Half a century on, the reason it still works live is that the room is part of the show.