ROCKY HORROR’S PATRICIA QUINN – A RELUCTANT MAGENTA
EXCLUSIVE
Legendary Rocky Horror icon Patricia Quinn is heading back to Scotland and she couldn’t be happier. “When I left drama school, my first stop was Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre,” she beams, adding, “That was in the late sixties/early seventies, when it was the most extraordinarily brilliant repertory theatre in the world.”
Indeed, a short time after appearing in numerous Citizens’ productions, Quinn returned to London where in 1973 she would audition for the roles that would change her life, The Usherette and Magenta in The Rocky Horror Show, by Richard O’Brien. It was also during her time at The Citz, that Quinn is reported to have first worked with Tim Curry… or did she. Having appeared in plays as diverse as Fando and Lis, Les Liaisons Dangereuses and The Shadow of a Gunman in ’69 and ’70, which led Artistic Director Phillip Prowse to declare her ‘the finest actress’ to have appeared on the Gorbals theatre’s stage, Quinn, according to the theatre’s archives was then cast in their 1971 production of Jean Genet’s The Maids, as was Curry. A portent of things to come perhaps… although Quinn has no memory of it.
“Did I?”, she asks, genuinely surprised, “How extraordinary, because I don’t remember him.”
Whether they did or not, the records of the production may, of course, have become muddled over the decades, Curry did indeed go on to star as Dr Frank N Furter, the alien transvestite scientist at the heart of The Rocky Horror Show and its film adaptation, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, in which he donned the very same Basque, sourced from Glasgow’s historic Barras flea market, that he had worn in The Maids.
It’s Quinn’s Rocky Horror connection that brings her to Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre on the 3rd of May, where she will be reunited with two more of her Rocky Horror co-stars ahead of a 50th Anniversary screening of the movie. On the evening, the 81-year-old, fondly hailed the ‘First Lady of Fishnets’ by her legion of fans, will be joined by Barry Bostwick, 81, and Nell Campbell, 72, who played Brad Majors and Columbia respectively, for a Q+A session before the screening, which will brought to life by a live shadow cast.
It comes as little surprise to find the Scottish capital is another of Quinn’s favourite places, as she recalls her 2004 Edinburgh Festival Fringe appearance in Alison Carr’s sell-out play, Patricia Quinn Saved My Life, which found her ‘disrupting’ opening performances by joining the cast to appear with them as herself.
“The most extraordinary thing about that play was that it took place in a big iron lift with front and back doors; the audience came in the front, the actors the back, and then the lift then went up as everyone stood and watched the play. I’d never seen anything like it.”
For Quinn, her return to Edinburgh will also be a celebration of the dual roles she originated at London’s Royal Court Theatre Upstairs all those years ago. As The Usherette, it was Quinn who first invited unsuspecting audiences into the raunchy world of Rocky Horror when, on 19 June 1973, she opened the first ever performance, singing Science Fiction/Double Feature, a song she admits was her sole reason for doing the musical, much to the dismay of her agent.
She remembers, “I’d heard there was to be a musical at the Royal Court’s 60-seat upstairs theatre but my agent didn’t want me to do it. The venue was so small they didn’t make a penny from it. I asked him what it was about and he said, ‘It’s something about a circus…’.” She laughs, “He was right, I’ve been in this bloody circus ever since.”
At the audition, O’Brien asked Quinn to sing along with him as he played a song he had just written, on his guitar. “I thought, ‘Oh God, I don’t know how to do that,” she admits, but she tried anyway – that song was Science Fiction/Double Feature.
“After I heard it I went skipping down King’s Road, where the audition was, thinking, ‘That song was brilliant.’ Within half an hour of getting home my agent called to say they wanted me to do it. I was absolutely astounded and said, ‘Great, I’m doing it,’ to which he replied, ‘No you’re not. You haven’t read the script yet’.”
Following his advice Quinn headed to the Stage Door of the Royal Court, to pick up a script. “When I got there, there was hardly any script. I went through it, there was someone called Magenta with like four lines. She was really boring and had nothing else to do, but I said, ‘I don’t care, I’m still doing it’.”
She reiterates, “The only reason I did The Rocky Horror Show was to play The Usherette and get to sing THAT song, not to play Magenta.”
Quinn wasn’t just the first to appear on stage in the cult musical, she was also first to leave the show, after just two months, “I left to play British suffragette Christabel Pankhurst and win the vote for women,” she says, proudly.
In 1975 Quinn was asked to reprise one of her roles for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Again, it was a low budget affair and one that Quinn initially refused to do.
“They said they were making a film, which was unbelievable, and they wanted the same cast, which was also unbelievable, but also that they weren’t having an Usherette because that didn’t work for the film. I said, ‘Then I’m not doing it. If I’m not playing The Usherette, I’m not doing the
film. Sorry’.”
When one of the film’s producers tried to persuade her, inviting Quinn to visit the set, she acquiesced and concedes, “When I saw the set, the laboratory with 20 Transylvanians on motorbikes, and my wonderful dress, created by Sue Blane, for the dinner scene, I said, ‘Oh, I’m doing this. And that was that.”
She continues, “When we were all in the car later, Tim Curry asked Richard O’Brien just who was singing Science Fiction/Double Feature, only for Richard to reply, ‘I am.’ I was furious, I thought, ‘You bastard. You took my song, what a jerk’.”
There was, however, a consolation prize yet to come, on the last day of an exhausting shoot, Quinn received one final request from the production team; could they film her disembodied lips to sync with O’Brien’s vocals for, what else, Science Fiction/Double Feature.
“I said, ‘How much?’” she laughs, and the rest is history; that opening sequence becoming one of the most iconic of all time. “Exactly,” Quinn agrees, adding mischievously, “but it should have been my bloody voice.”
Full tour details and tickets HERE
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