Hypatia Avenue

"Touch-a-touch-a-touch meeeee... I wanna be dirteeeeeee..."

Valentines weekend… Taxloss and I have been a couple since I was a teenager (well, still technically a teenager) and from the very beginning, we knew we would never be interested in all the soppy, mawkish, twee things that the embossed and sparkly, appallingly rhymed Hallmark world thinks couples will like. However, Valentines Day comes around and love is in the air and although we both hate it, we do get an overwhelming urge to do something together that will, in some way, mark the event. So: courtesy of dear old Lucifer we went off to his cinema to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show, presented by the Shadow Cabaret. We didn’t dress up (I always feel inadequate when we do as Taxloss has shockingly good legs for a bloke – or a woman. Soooo unfair) and turned up with not long to go, thinking we could just go straight to the screening room and sit down, all inconspicuous. Lucifer, god bless him, found us and told us there was still some time to go and took us to the bar…

… which was full of very, very, very dressed up people. We got confronted by a fat bloke who looked like Chris Moyles in a flowery dress and too much make-up, who put lipstick Vs on our foreheads as Rocky Horror Experience Virgins. Which was nice. There was a bloke with an LED display thing around his neck that read "Rocky Horror Virgin" on loop and some nice boys in make-up and corsets and fat girls in French maid outfits and black lipstick. There was a real buzz in the bar and although I spilt my drink like a four-year old and poor Lucifer had to mop it up, we had a really exciting time just hanging around and waiting for the film to start.

There was a distinctly ropey cabaret act (bad miming and girls dancing in bras who should really wear more clothes in public). Then the film started! And there was a riot of shouting up at the screen when the lips appeared… "A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…there grew a big pair of lips and they were lovely lips…" and the few people who got goodie bags threw rice at the wedding scene and threw flowers when the bride threw her bouquet, we sang along with the "damn it, Janet" song, the cabaret performed the whole film live at the front, word perfect by the looks of it…
Everyone whipped out newspapers at the same time as Janet and then put them over their heads when she ran out to the castle through the rain, almost everyone stood up and did the time warp when the song came on. There was a line where Frank'n'Furter says something about sending "birthday cards, wedding cards, good luck cards" or something like that and everyone threw playing cards into the air, we shouted "seig heil!" when Dr. Scott turned up, party poppers went off continuously, really silly pre-empting went on throughout such as "What’s your favourite magazine?" preceding Riff Raff opening the door and saying "Hello" … and so on.

Oh, it was messy, anarchic, silly, good fun and clearly something to do when a bit pissed or looking for something different in a cinema. We laughed, we sang, we picked confetti and rice out of our hair on the way home.

And we're really looking forward to the cabaret's next project, also at the Genesis cinema: The Ghostbusters Experience. I am SO looking forward to this.

Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve just come