A Night We Would Remember... for a long, long time

NARRATOR

                       I would like if I may to take you on a

                       strange journey.

         He crosses to the bookshelf.  He selects a dossier.  We see the title:

        "The Denton Affair".  He returns to his desk and places it on a

        bookstand.  He puts on his reading glasses.

NARRATOR

                       It seemed a fairly ordinary night when

                       Brad Majors and his fiancée Janet Weiss

                       (two young ordinary healthy kids) left

                       Denton that late November evening to

                       visit Dr Everett Scott, ex. tutor and

                       now friend of both of them.  It's true

                       there were dark storm clouds, heavy,

                       black and pendulous, toward which they

                       were driving.  It's true also that the

                       spare tyre they were carrying was badly

                       in need of some air.  But they being

                       normal kids and on a night out, well

                       they were not going to let a storm

                       spoil the events of their evening.

                       On a night out.

 

        He closes the book marking the place.

        Thunder is heard distantly on the sound track.

 

NARRATOR                                                                          
                       It was a night out they were going to

                       remember for a very long time. *

 This script setting the scene for a play brings forth memories of a journey, no, an adventure, that was to become a milestone in my life.

It was the middle seventies, and after several trips to London, I was enthralled with the city.   Prior trips had not been budget tours or “death marches” of sightseeing, but this time was to be exceptional.

My work pal Diana and I decided we wanted to do a London theater weekend.  Diana’s engineer husband John had just recently landed contract to design infrastructure for a new Kraft plant. It involved a LOT of money. How I came to benefit from this, I do not know, but John was intensely involved in his new project and unable to get away.  Diana felt deserving of benefit in John’s bounty, so our planned trip got sort of “supersized,” and I was in on the game. Diana brought along a new Blackglamma mink coat, her first reward from John.

 We already were flying first class TWA - a perk from our industry affiliation.  TWA and Pan Am were competing for the very lucrative trans-Atlantic route dominance and service reflected their rivalry. TWA Royal Ambassador Service  featured cold lobster salad, Chateaubriand carved at the seat, Mumm’s Cordon Rouge Champagne, and 1^st growth French Bordeaux wines throughout the meal, ending with made-to-order  Ice cream sundaes.

A first-run movie and overnight nap ensued, and we arrived at London’s Heathrow Friday morning. 

 A car hire took us to our hotel, the brand-new Intercontinental , on the corner of Park Lane and Piccadilly in posh Mayfair.  Our previous stays were at the London Hilton and the Grosvenor, both grand hotels, but this time, availed ourselves of John’s largesse, rewarding ourselves with a suite.

 It was exquisite.  Our two bedroom accommodation was appointed with period pieces of finest quality. 18^th century ornate bed frames and headboards. Very old English. Large windows overlooked Hyde Park and the Serpentine.  We had a   dining room seating 12, and an on-call butler.  We could have spent the weekend luxuriating within the hotel, but Diana and I were motivated to shop.  We set off  immediately after check-in, stopping only at the concierge to place “puts” for theater tickets on Friday and Saturday nights. 

 Friday was fun jaunting around. We hit Floris, the most intriguing perfume shop in the world, browsed some of the most charming book shops, and ended up in Harrod’s food court, the temple extradinaire of gastronomy.  Back to the hotel to freshen up and head out for dinner and show, we stopped at the conceriege to check our theater fortunes. Alas, our first choice, “Chorus Line,” was sold except for 2^nd balcony. This was not a “second balcony trip,” so we asked what other luck we could muster.  They had tickets that night for a show “Let My People Come,” a musical review by columnist Earl Wilsons’s son.  We were lukewarm on this one, but were told it was very ‘avant garde’ so we thought bragging rights would at least give us something to tout back home. We decided to see it.  We set off for dinner at Tidy Dols. Their ambience was natural candlelight and musicians playing medieval instruments accompanying dinner.  Our repast was good traditional English fare. Then, on to  Village Gate Theater.

The play.  Oh dear. The best I can say about it is that we braved through to final curtain.  Opening curtain rose revealing a young “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm”  pulling a taut wide red ribbon across the stage to musical accompaniment.  As she exited stage left, from stage right we saw  the end of the ribbon, tied around the rather substantial erect penis of a naked black actor.  I looked to Diana. All I could see were her eyes peering out over the protective swathing of her mink coat.  She was slowly slouching into her seat like a melting Oz witch.  As I said, we stayed till the bitter end. That musical was not to be a part of any conversation when we got home.  Wilson may have disavowed his son because of that play

 Portobello Road outdoor market was on for Saturday, as that day all the antique stalls are open.  Diana found  a 18th century Sterling desk set that she bought for John’s home office.  I just took in the ambience of this famous outdoor market. 

We arrived back at the hotel tired, but ready for dinner. Stopping at the concierge desk, I inquired as to our luck in tickets, hoping that the Saturday experience might be better than Friday’s.

“Well,” we were informed, “I have been able to get you fourth row center for this hot new musical down on Kings Road at the Kings Road Theater.”  

“What is it? What’s it about?”

“It’s sort of a cross between Frankenstein and Flash Gordon with a lot of catchy music and dance, and it’s now becoming a very hot ticket.”  (They always tell you that when they can’t get what you want.)  But it did sound interesting, so Diana, the mink, and I set off to dinner and our new adventure.   We didn’t know the theater, so we were glad we had a car hire. They sent a wonderful old Daimler, known as “The bankers Rolls Royce.”  English bankers don’t want to appear to be making a bundle off your money, so they buy conservative Daimlers instead of the showy Rolls. But Daimler’s cars are opulent.  Butter soft upholstery and mouton carpeting so thick you want to get down and spend a night on the floor.

 

We got dropped in front of the venue, an old converted cinema.  Seeing many well-dressed “theater folk” bolstered our thoughts that we might have made a good choice after all.

 

Inside the smallish, plain theater, a young lady in stage make-up was circulating the audience with a carrybox of treats hung from her neck as cigarette girls did in 30’s nightclubs.   Houselights dimmed. Overture began.

There was a murmur and heads turned toward the back. Walking down the aisle (where Diane was ensconced 4^th row) came a really tall man in a volumous cape. He was humming a song we would later know as “Sweet Transvestite.” He was in full, garish, feminine makeup and wig.  Averting her eyes to the floor, Diana whispered, “He is wearing high heel pumps larger than I ever thought they made,” as she once again started slinking down into the mink up to her eyes. 

The “woman-man” hopped onstage and exited as the curtain opened to a proper English professor type seated in his library.  He spoke the words this story began with; “I would like to take you on a strange journey. . .”

And so began one of the most interesting, most innovative, funniest, and most astounding  musical productions I have ever seen. Diana and I witnessed the beginnings of a phenomenon that started a cult still going until this day. That tall guy with the largest high heels known to man was Tim Curry, and the show was “The Rocky Horror Show,“ subsequently made into a motion picture (with Curry, Susan Sarandon, and the singer Meatloaf), “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

 The English have always embraced drag performance, relishing them as though national treasure, but, here in the States, it wasn’t nearly a mainstream thing. Diana and I excitedly gibbered and jabbered all the way home. At the office Monday we couldn’t stop talking about this fabulous show we had fallen into.  But people couldn’t get a handle on a transvestite from outer space singing about building himself a MAN in his upstairs mansion laboratory.  “Huh? What?  You’re kidding me,” were the put-downs we got.

 When the movie of the stage show hit the States, it went ballistic after an initially poor showing mainstream.  This theatrical craziness became such a cult hit that it played the Musicbox in Chicago and other theaters nationally for almost 15 years. It still plays nationally and there are staged revivals. People come to the theater dressed as characters from the show and mimiced lines of dialogue.  It became an audience  participation event, making it a vanguard of  interactive theater. It legitimized drag in this country for mainstream audiences, making way for shows like “La Cage au Folles,” and “Kinky Boots.”  It became the hit that propelled Tim Curry to stardom.

For Diana, me, and perhaps even ‘the mink’, “that dark and stormy night” became one of the most memorable times of our lives.

“A night we would remember for a long, long time.”*

 

* Script for “Rocky Horror Show”