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Thespian Scott Blanks is a “raconteur de force.”  Animated and gregarious, capable of great
warmth and dagger-like seriousness, an interview with the Columbia theater veteran
is a conversation-gesticulation roller coaster. I’d say “strap yourself in,” but given that Blanks is about to star as
Dr. Frank-N-Furter in “The Rocky Horror Show” at Trustus Theatre for the fifth
time, I’ll venture a “strap yourself (or something else) on.”

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At its
heart, “The Rocky Horror Show” is the story of Adam and Eve from the serpent’s
perspective.  And, as everyone knows,
Satan loves a scintillating lounge act.

A voluptuous
Eve tastes the forbidden fruit of an alien transvestite in platform heel boots whilst
a wheelchair-bound closet Nazi scientist plinks away at a baby grand like a
drooling, nonagenarian Liberace.  In the
words of George Gershwin, “Who could ask for anything more?”

With this fifth
incarnation of “Rocky Horror” at Trustus Theatre, some purists might cry foul,
but an entire new generation of fans of the cult classic is likely to
emerge.  This production is the artistic
amalgam of Hansel and Gretel and “Natural Born Killers.”  Director Chad Henderson (“Dog Sees God,” “The
Lieutenant of Inishmore”) has traded in the familiar, David Bowie glam starship
(now clearly a space clunker) for a stylized, 21st-century sexual intergalactic
Bayliner.  And with the exception of a
few technical glitches (wake up, sound techies!), this bitch flies.

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Columbia theatergoers are in for
a treat this June, as veteran Columbia Marionette Theatre puppeteers Lyon
Forrest Hill and Kimi Maeda take audience members on an adult puppetry voyage
to two separate worlds of love, secrets, discovery and loss.

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