 "Photo: Beata Dumaplin")
 "Photo: Beata Dumaplin")
 "Photo: Beata Dumaplin")
Chico Cabaret doubled as a wedding chapel after the opening night of “Rocky Horror Live” Thursday, fulfilling the dream of two of its members in the process.
Following the Cabaret’s energetic rendition of the rock opera phenomenon, performers came back out to dance the “Time Warp” for Ron Halvorson and Anne Murphy’s matrimony. To make it official, the ceremony was conducted by ordained minister Allen Lunde, a local actor who stars in the production.
Both long-time participants of the Cabaret’s theater company, the newly wed Halvorsons met 12 years ago from an ad in the newspaper and they have been together since. They have been wanting to get married for a long time and, sitting in a movie theater one day, they simultaneously decided to do it “Rocky Horror” style. Ron Halvorson was already playing the narrator in the production, so everything fell perfectly into place.
“Me and Anne think exactly alike,” he said. “We’re the same everything. We ride Harleys everywhere and we’ve only had two fights in 12 years.”
Whenever Ron took the stage during “Rocky Horror Live” to provide context to the story about a stuffy couple that gets wrapped into a world of transsexual Transylvanians, the audience ridiculed him as a “no-neck fucker.” This is one of the classic audience callbacks that define the “Rocky Horror” experience.
During the play, so-called “phantoms” paced the aisles and sat in the front rows to guide so-called “virgins” through the mythology that has come to envelope the show. Their outbursts of sexual innuendo play on pauses in dialogue and obvious plot devices in the show.
“Virgins can expect an eye-opening experience,” no-necked narrator Halvorson said as he gripped the top of his cane. “Once you’ve been coming awhile, the key to ‘Rocky Horror’ is to see if you can come up with a new line.”
Over the thirty years of its running, “Rocky Horror” has evolved from a campy musical to a full-fledged event where people push the boundaries of their sexuality. Men dress in lace with duct tape over their nipples to showcase their fandom and women wear the most scant burlesque clothing they can find. People spray the theater with water guns when it rains in the show and they blow bubbles in the air before intermission.
Director Phil Ruttenberg thinks audience participation adds a unique theater experience to the show, he said.
“The audience feels as much a part of the show as the actors themselves,” Ruttenberg said. “They get so wrapped up in the story and that’s the beauty of it.”
Beneath the fun of audience participation, many people miss the message of the show, said Lunde, the minister who plays a biker with a lobotomy.
“Once you kind of sit down and look at the story, it actually has something to say about loss of innocence,” he said as fake blood trickled down his face. “It’s about people’s sexuality and confronting whether you’re innocent as you think you are.”
Earl can be reached at
entertainmenteditor@theorion.com
Be the first to comment on this article!