What a smack in the face of the Transvestite community choosing a women to play a arguably the most well known transvestite in movie history. If you got no balls you need stay the F away from playing Frankinfuter. Why not Taye Diggs? Shame on you Tim Curry for being anywhere near this.
OKAY, everyone... simmer down! MY take... abominable!
Laverne Cox? Unbelivable VOICE!
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG for Frank-N-Furter!!!
Laverne Cox is a bold choice and completely within the spirit of Rocky Horror.
shareNo it isn't! A bold choice would have been casting a transgender man in the role or a transvestie. The ironic thing is she was cast to appear "progressive" but the choice falls flat because it completely misses the point. If Lavern wanted to do the role justice she should have played the role male. Women have played the role to great affect in both the staged versions and shadow casts, but they still played the role male. Instead we get a Frank who is unappologetically a woman and even goes by female pronouns (except when Riff Raff calls her master). There is nothing shocking about seeing Laverne in a corset, there is nothing shocking about Laverne kissing Brad because she is a she. And even if you don't believe that people can or should identify with a gender opposite their biological sex she still presents as a woman. Astetically it looks like a vegas show girl making out with a nerdy guy. It completely loses Brad's homosexual awakeing and Janet's gets cut short because she immediatley jumps into bed with Rocky. This wasn't giving yourself over to absolute pleasure this was giving yourself over to socially acceptable versions of pleasure.
Its something you'll get used to a mental mind *beep* can be nice!
Laverne was hit and miss. Transgender and Transvestite are definitely different things, but all that aside, she clearly had no issues with it, so she chose to play Frankenfurter. The thing that was most annoying is that she calls herself a man and a transvestite in "Sweet Transvestite" but then gets called a She when Riff Raff goes to kill her/him?
Either way, she was hot and cold as Frank. Some of the acting and the songs and the way she was was pretty convincing that she was a decent Frank. Other times, I cringed. She did it decently, but was no Tim Curry.