For a show that ran for only 48 performances on Broadway in 1975, the “Rocky Horror Show” has had legs. Chalk it up to those fishnet stockings, which were first donned by Tim Curry in the role of Frank ‘N’ Furter — the “sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania” — in the ill-fated Broadway musical by Richard O’Brien and later in the 1975 film adaptation.Now Laverne Cox, the transgendered star of “Orange Is the New Black,” will be taking a shot at the role in the new Fox television adaptation of “Rocky Horror,” to be directed by Kenny Ortega of “High School Musical” fame and set to air next fall. The reality-television star and social activist comes to the part with a lot of loaded expectations due to the unexpected success of the original movie version that, like the original stage show, was a spoof of b-movie horror flicks in which a mad scientist on a dark and stormy night unveils his latest creation — the muscled and tanned Rocky of the show’s title — to a naïve newlywed couple who stumble upon his castle.After being panned by the critics, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” went on to become a cult classic, holding the record for the longest-running film release in history. For decades, audiences flocked to midnight screenings of the film dressed as the characters and singing and dancing along to the score. The cult success erased the taint of the Broadway flop, which was something of an anomaly given the fact that the musical had been a long-running success in London and Los Angeles prior to the New York bow.Fox has wanted to make a television special of the show for more than a decade, obviously eschewing the family formula that has catapulted other recent adaptations such as “The Sound of Music” and “Peter Pan” to ratings success. The challenge that the production faces is whether Cox, who is not known for her singing, can rock out on the score as Curry did in the stage and film versions and which Tom Hewitt did in a successful Broadway revival in 2000.What is certain is that it will be another chapter in the storied career of a show that can boast that it was one of Susan Sarandon’s earliest film appearances (as the newlywed opposite Barry Bostwick); that Dick Cavett played the narrator in the Broadway revival; and that the lighting apprentice for the LA production was the aptly named Al Franken, decades before he became the U.S. Senator from Minnesota.
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