ANYONE FOR TEDDY?: Throw a Rocky Horror Dinner Party, it’ll be bloody marvellous

Grizzle and gore become the themes of The Rocky Horror Show soon after you settle into your theatre (or cinema) seat, and it’s what the millions of fans of this now veteran musical love. You go with an absurd glee in the ghastly things that are about to unfold right before your eyes. You relish the unpleasantness of it all.

And it’s all surprisingly “refeened”, to use a pronunciation of refined used by an old and much missed friend. “Too refined pour moi, darling,” he might have said. Frank-N-Furter, the transvestite scientist at the core of the show, might have said that too, though he didn’t. If we think Frank-N-Furter’s personal pronoun would have been “moi”, I have no doubt it would have been, but in the show, he does not say the word.

Frank is frightfully posh, but as cunning, duplicitous and mean as hell.

The mad doctor-scientist, as personified by Tim Curry in the movie following his huge success in the London stage show from 1973 onwards, was front of mind as we drove out to the theatre, for Curry had just died, even after our tickets had been reserved. So the next two hours became something of a ritual of honouring and remembering the actor and the role with which he was and will forever be associated.

Curry fell naturally into the film role he became world-famous for, because he had already played the role in London’s West End from 1973 onwards. Curry wore thigh-high boots to his audition, which he’d spray-painted silver. For early shows, he spoke in a jokey German accent, but one day he was on the London underground and overheard a posh woman refer to her “hice” in the country. (“Oh, I have a marvellous country hice!” Something like that.)

Hice is the classic royal pronunciation of house, and Curry decided on the spot that Frank should speak like the queen. I was once told, by a famous South African stage actress who had studied at RADA (London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts), that at RADA students are taught to say “a rind and a bite the hice” for “around and about the house”.

Rocky Horror and I (to diminutise the show’s name in the way you do for an old friend) go back a long way. I knew the album when it first came out. The music and its songs, especially Time Warp, Sweet Transvestite, Over at the Frankenstein Place and Dammit Janet, received plenty of radio play in South Africa in the day, despite censorship restrictions. Our generation knew all the songs and all the lyrics.

A younger me even dolled up as Frank-N-Further for one of our Rocky Horror-themed parties in the late Eighties. Our friend John Caviggia (whose personal pronoun, if we’d had them when he died a decade ago, would undoubtedly have been “moi”) spent an afternoon doing my facial makeup (he was a master of theatre makeup, among his other diverse talents).

I greeted our friends at the front door with a jaunty, “How’d you doo-wah! I think perhaps you’d better both come inside, mwahahahaaa!”

Then, once their faces had rearranged themselves from the shock of it…

“Do have a look a rind the hice!”

This is just to say your Food Editor has Rocky Horror credentials. And last weekend the old friendship was refreshed when the family drove to Camps Bay to see The Rocky Horror Show at the Theatre on the Bay. When you’ve known a work of literature or theatre for so long, it becomes like a friend.

And it was as delicious as ever. You couldn’t help but drool at every horrifying turn of awfully wicked events. (Craig Urbani, who played Rocky in the 1992 production, is now Frank.)

Everyone’s naughty (even Janet, eventually) but Riff Raff has always been my favourite character. If I had been an actor, he’s the one I’d have hoped to play, to deliver that wondrous line, dripping mischief and gleeful malice, “I think perhaps you’d better both come inside.” Coming a close second is Riff Raff’s unforgettable “The master is having one of his affairs,” a moment that has every Rocky Horror fan grinning a broad Cheshire Cat sort of grin.

And a loudly theatrical “Mwahahaaaaa” echoes in the theatre as we enter the palatial residence that Brad and Janet (aka the unluckiest road trippers in literature) stumbled upon one stormy night.

That “palace” is actually Oakley Court, a genuinely gothic mansion in Berkshire that was used as the location for the film version in 1975. The place was badly run down at the time, and consequently ideal for the creepy setting for the nasty events of that “night out that they were going to remember for a very long time”.

So I thought I’d invent a Rocky Horror Dinner Party! I don’t see why not.

The guests will be Brad Majors and Janet Weiss, of course, Dr Everett von Scott (aka Dr Scott), Magenta, Columbia, and Rocky Horror himself – and a few of my/your closest friends. You could dress up as any one of them, though I’m guessing you’ll be Dr Frank-N-Further himself. I know I would. (Did you know Rocky’s surname is presumed to be Horror? I’d never thought about it, but it is.)

The room will need to be dressed to suit the theme. There’ll be streamers and tinsel and red vases of long-stemmed black roses, and I will have spent days burning tall cathedral candles so that the wax runs down spookily, as if they’ve been burning in hidden alcoves while the castle slept. (Castle? Just leave it to the collective imagination. Create the space and the guests will do the rest.) Drape the table in red velvet, or green baize.

Right, let’s see what’s on the slab…

There’ll be a welcome drink of a Bloody Mary, what else – with a little dagger plunged into it as a macabre garnish? – and you, as Frankie, can mumble something about it having a special ingredient heh-heh-heh. (You will of course be in high heels and suspenders.)

I can imagine Frank’s face when he comes in himself (as I think he would) to present his little amuse-bouche to his guests in person. “A little something I ran up for your amusement, darlings.” And that throaty chuckle as he sets down little plates before them: “Finger food. Very fresh.” 

This dish could be strips of mozzarella wrapped in prosciutto, looking for all the world like witches’ fingers. Or green asparagus spears, blanched. Or white asparagus from a tin. Wrap them in prosciutto and add almond slivers at the “finger tips”.

And dammit, Janet, if there isn’t another mwahahaaa coming on because the first course just has to be…

Liver!

Brought into the dining room by Riff Raff himself in his long black tailcoat and fingerless black gloves. (Choose your skinniest friend for this, or the one that looks most like Bill Nighy. I’d love to see him as Riff Raff.)

The master will have created a delectably fine pâté from a liver of unknown origin (mwahahahahaaaaa!), dressed with a sticky sauce of strawberries and pomegranate juice, to run redly off the plate and onto unsuspecting laps. Here’s an easy chicken liver pâté you can knock together.

For a main course, Eddie’s Teddy? Nope, let’s not start cooking and eating little bears, even in the pursuit of theatre and fun. (You know of course that when Eddie said he didn’t like his teddy, they knew he was a no-good kid?)

No, there’ll be no teddies. I fear it will have to be a pork roast. Or a great haunch of beef. 

No mere chicken will do now that Frank-N-Furter has slaughtered Eddie, the youthful miscreant who may or may not lie in a coffin under the dinner table. Eeek.

I think we’ll have the pork with a caper sauce, because everything in the show is such a caper and, anyway, capers and mustard make a wonderful sauce for pork, and their arresting (haha) flavours will disguise any bloody bits that make one wonder about who or whatever may be under the table.

Or, if pork does not please you, choose this perfectly pink roast beef sirloin, which you must admit looks as if it will suit the role perfectly.

Let’s serve it on a bed of beetroot purée – to tone in with the decor, you understand. Perhaps some Brussels sprouts, because so many people curl their mouths up at them, and that should match the mood.

This dinner scene, in case you’ve already seen The Rocky Horror Show in a theatre, does not appear in the stage version, and never did. On stage, Frank goes off into the wings where we hear the monstrous gargled sounds of Eddie’s unkind demise. 

Not so in the film where, in a dastardly surprise, Dr Frank-N-Furter whips off the tablecloth to reveal the body of Eddie underneath. Tim Curry was the only cast member present who knew that Eddie lay there. Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon, as Brad and Janet, Patricia Quinn as Magenta, Nell Campbell as Columbia and Peter Hinwood as Rocky were all kept in the dark by director Jim Sharman, who caught their genuine shock with his trickery.

Here’s a roast pork recipe you could run up for your darkly amusing little dinner party. Once it’s done, deglaze the pan juices with white wine and stir in some Hot English Mustard and a tablespoonful of capers.

Now! We need something sickly sweet for dessert. I’m seeing strawberry ripple ice cream in my mind, from my youth – and maybe Eddie’s, whose was arguably more misspent. (Marginally – I never did anybody in with a switchblade knife but I did once massacre a duck by roasting it for too long.) With a wafer stuck in it like a cleaver, mwahahaa.

I found this recipe by Jo Cooks, one of the better internet cooks. They look like the perfect sweet ending to a macabre feast, don’t you think? Say you do!

Please don’t feel you have to grab the ends of your precious tablecloth and pull it out from under your guests’ messy dinner plates. Innuendo will do the trick just as well, probably better.