The Broadway revival of The Rocky Horror Show marked who died this week on August 26 by turning Studio 54 into a memorial for Tim Curry. The tribute centered on the original Frank-N-Furter and pushed the production beyond routine remembrance into live repertory history.
A large photo of Curry sat surrounded by electric candles and offerings while Director Sam Pinkleton added a new second-act callout: “Who is Tim Curry?” That framing made the memorial part of the show’s action, not an afterthought.
Studio 54 and Frank-N-Furter
Paul Soileau, the current Frank-N-Furter, used the curtain speech to connect Curry’s work to the role’s survival across generations. “Frank-N-Furter is a marvelous beast, and Frank-N-Furter inhabits spaces and sneaks into spaces and places and old theatre houses like this, movie theatres, teenagers' bedrooms,” he said.
Soileau then drew a direct line from the part to Curry himself. “if you trace it all back 53 years ago, there's one home and one vessel that Frank-N-Furter would actually call home, and it's Tim Curry,” he said, adding that “53 years ago, Richard O'Brien laid a piece of paper in front of Tim Curry with ingredients on it, and he took all those ingredients and he created this beast.”
That speech carried the night’s sharpest contradiction. Soileau said obituaries often state that Curry did not have children, then rejected it outright: “obituaries always say that that he didn't have children, and that's bullshit.” He answered himself immediately: “Because he has so many children in this world.”
Luke Evans and Jake Shears
Luke Evans and Jake Shears followed with a three-person rendition of “Going Home,” giving the tribute a performance spine instead of a single speech. The revival used that number to bridge Curry’s original turn as Frank-N-Furter with the show’s current casting cycle.
September 11 is next for Jake Shears, who is set to begin his tenure. For anyone watching the production as a living inheritance rather than a nostalgia piece, the message was plain: the role still belongs to Curry first, and the revival knows it.
