Shock Treatment, the sequel to cult hit film musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show, is to be brought to the stage for the first time at London’s King’s Head Theatre this spring.
The world premiere production, which has been adapted for the stage by Tom Crowley and Benji Sperring, will run at the Islington venue from 17 April to 6 June.
Set years after the end of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Shock Treatment finds Rocky Horror’s heroes Brad and Janet stuck in a failing marriage. When they’re invited onto a hit TV show by childhood friends and local celebrities Betty and Ralph, they enter a world of charismatic media moguls and contestants who are willing to do anything for a taste of fame. But are everyone’s motives entirely what they seem?
While Richard O’Brien – who, for people of a certain age, will forever be associated with cult game show The Crystal Maze – created the book, lyrics and music for The Rocky Horror Picture Show and its stage predecessor The Rocky Horror Show, he provides just the lyrics for Shock Treatment. He is joined in the creative team by Rocky Horror’s director Jim Sharman, who wrote Shock Treatment’s book, and composer Richard Hartley.
Speaking about the impending stage adaptation, O’Brien said: “I have always been of the opinion that it would work better as a stage play; the atmosphere, the studio, the lights, bring the show to the audience in a way the film cannot. Hearing the ideas of this young company [Tarquin Productions], they saw the potential and possibilities of something which has waited patiently on the shelf for many years, and one can only hope that the excellent energy and enthusiasm they are bringing to the project will be seductively palpable through the show. It was our ideas that created the work originally, but it is their ideas that have shaped it to what it will become.”