Tim Curry’s Frank-N-Furter Still Owns Every Rocky Horror Stage

Actor, singer, and the definitive Frank-N-Furter of stage and screen.

Tim Curry died peacefully at his home in Los Angeles on 25 August, aged eighty. He had lived for more than a decade with the effects of a major stroke in 2012, which left him unable to walk, though it never stopped him from working. He leaves behind a legacy of more than four decades on stage and screen, three Tony nominations, two Olivier nominations, and one performance so iconic that it remains the standard against which every actor who takes on the part is measured.

That performance was Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a role Curry originated at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 1973 in the first production of The Rocky Horror Show, Richard O’Brien’s glam, cross-dressing send-up of B-movie science fiction. The show transferred to Los Angeles, then Broadway, and was filmed as The Rocky Horror Picture Show in 1975, a role that made Curry a cult figure for life, corset, fishnets and all. Even fifty years and countless revivals later, including a Tony-nominated Broadway one just this year, Curry’s Frank-N-Furter remains the benchmark for all other performances.

He returned to musicals throughout his career, often in unconventional roles. He played Bill Snibson in the 1987 Broadway production of Me and My Girl, then Alan Swann, a washed-up matinee idol loosely based on Errol Flynn, in the 1992 musical adaptation of My Favorite Year, which earned him his second Tony nomination. His third came for King Arthur in Monty Python’s Spamalot, a role he originated on Broadway in 2005 and then brought home to the West End the following year, where it earned him an Olivier nomination and the WhatsOnStage Theatregoers’ Choice Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

On screen, his musical credits ran alongside his gallery of villains. Rooster Hannigan, the con man menacing Little Orphan Annie in John Huston’s 1982 film version of Annie, is as broad and funny a piece of musical comedy acting as he ever gave.

What made him rare, across all his work, was his fearless range. He went from Mozart in Amadeus to a cross-dressing mad scientist to a matinee idol to a medieval king within the space of two decades, and he never seemed to be slumming it in any of them. Even confined to a wheelchair after his stroke, he kept turning up, at conventions, at anniversary screenings of Rocky Horror, still delighting in the thing that started it all.

He was also able to continue voice work for cartoons, creating vivid and delightful characters that showcased his verbal dexterity. He is best known for voicing Nigel Thornberry, Hexxus, and G. Gordon Godfrey.

I was lucky enough to see him on stage twice. First as the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance revival at Drury Lane, where he was delightfully camp, energetic, and over the top. The second was in Sheridan’s The Rivals, where he played Bob Acres at the National Theatre in 1983, a performance rightly praised for his physical and verbal dexterity, and one in which he more than held his own with established theatrical greats Michael Hordern and Geraldine McEwan.

There won’t be another Frank-N-Furter like him. A light has gone out over at the Frankenstein place.

John Martin saw Frank-N-Furter created on a London stage and watched Curry hold his own against Hordern and McEwan a decade later. EyeOnLondon won’t see his equal again.

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