REVIEW: Rocky Horror Show. Malvern Theatres. Friday May 13.

THE Rocky Horror Show is panto for grown-ups and audience participation is only to be expected, although the level of participation relies, perhaps, on the standard of one's fish-nets and basque.

Many members of the audience made the commendable effort to dress up for a show that has changed in its impact from a shocking off-side spectacle in the 1970s to a tradition as British as Widow Twanky and Mother Goose.

I wore tweeds, but I did not feel out of place and soon found myself smiling at this pre-Aids, sci-fi fairy tale of sensual liberation. It is what it is, and it is enormous fun, so long as you don't go there expecting Hamlet and take-away philosophy for modern times.

For the Malvern Theatres audience, it was an opportunity to let down one's hair, or to put up one's hair, or to hide one's hair entirely with an outrageous hat or skull cap, and all within safe parameters of a tried and tested plot, a ritual rite of passage for folks who, in the main, actually made that journey long ago.

The Rocky Horror show, then, is largely an exercise in nostalgia from an age when we were perhaps more shockable.

Doing his best to be shocked, on our behalf, was the very British narrator Steve Punt, who responded to the mainly-planted shouts from the audience with feigned distress. He was brilliant.

"Blimey," he said, "I didn't expect this level of filth in Malvern; in Hereford perhaps...."

Liam Tamne, as Frank-N-Furter, gave a punchy and sufficiently camp performance as the tranny a-moral alien, much along the lines of Tim Curry in the movie.

Kay Murphy as the scatty Magenta also gave a punchy performance and made the role her own, and Kristian Lavercombe was a suitably sinister and ambiguous Riff Raff.

In the end, of course, he blasts Frank to death with a ray gun.

But with only the magic of "The Time Warp", a kind of Birdy Song for would-be libertines, they are all soon dancing on the stage at the end, for a finale purely panto, and a fitting end to a great night out.

By Gary Bills-Geddes.