Walking past Studio 54 in midtown one spring evening feels like stepping back to the 1970s. The mirrored lobby is crowded with glittering guests beneath trembling chandeliers; walls are plastered with cheeky posters reading “DON’T GET HOT AND FLUSTERED” and “LET THEM THRILL YOU!” But it’s 2026, and the scene announces the Broadway revival of The Rocky Horror Show, which opened April 23.
Directed by Sam Pinkleton, fresh off the Tony-winning Oh, Mary!, the production leans into the show’s cult-movie roots: a young couple stumbles upon a castle run by a mad scientist and his unruly crew. The cast is star-studded—Stephanie Hsu as Janet, Juliette Lewis as Magenta, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez as Columbia, Luke Evans as Dr. Frank-N-Furter—with comedian Rachel Dratch narrating from the sidelines in a bedazzled suit.
What makes this revival unusual is how the theater itself is woven into the show. When Roundabout announced the production would be staged at the legendary nightclub-turned-theater, Pinkleton says it felt “almost too perfect to be true.” Studio 54’s maximalist, sparkly glamour—and its cheap, dirty, DIY edges—mirrors Rocky Horror’s blend of spectacle and camp. Pinkleton’s approach was not to hide the building’s worn character but to let the musical and the venue collide openly.
That meant adapting the show to Studio 54’s physical quirks: original alcoves bathed neon green, an aluminum foil crescent moon recalling the club’s dance-floor ornament, and even the decades-old leopard print carpet left in place. Designers kept signs of wear and allowed the building’s flaws to show, making it seem as if Rocky Horror had always lived at Studio 54. The set, a jumble of ’70s glam, B-movie horror, sci-fi references, and punk camp, nods as much to the source material as to nights at venues like Bushwick’s House of Yes, which the design team visited during research.
The collective Dots, led in part by co-founder Andrew D. Moerdyk, oversaw production design with a philosophy of restraint: don’t superimpose a new vision onto the show’s established cultural baggage, but instead make the best possible version of Rocky as written. That meant blurring where set begins and the venue ends—imagining Frank-N-Furter and his aliens raiding Studio 54 for inspiration. One favorite moment for Moerdyk is Frank-N-Furter’s first entrance from the theater floor, a deliberate nod to the spirits of Studio 54’s past—Grace Jones, David Bowie, Liza Minnelli and other larger-than-life figures who once dominated the dance floor.
The set feels like a slightly decayed castle: silver palm trees in upturned trash cans, plastic skeletons dispensing popcorn, mannequins stacked and spray-painted silver, and the preserved leopard carpet underfoot. Mannequins and a crescent moon reference the club’s history; small theatrical details—sequins and gems hidden around the theater—invite audience discovery. Dots designer Santiago Orjuela-Laverde says the heart of Rocky Horror is “beautiful otherness,” and the design team embraced their own weirdness to honor that spirit.
Pinkleton leaned into the venue’s mystique. He noted glitter still in the floorboards and even a disused “cocaine safe” gathering dust in the basement. Before rehearsals, he invited Pam Grossman, a New York-based witch, to perform rituals introducing the cast and crew to the space—an act intended to acknowledge the theater’s ancestors and hope they look kindly on this “gay little production” of Rocky Horror.
David Rockwell, whose Rockwell Group handled earlier Rocky Horror sets and who has a long relationship with the building—designing a sushi bar on its balcony in the 1980s and overseeing multiple shows staged there—contributes to the revival’s design lineage. He’s also part of Roundabout’s $100 million renovation plan for Studio 54, which will restore a permanent stage and orchestra pit while peeling back layers of the space’s history rather than erasing them.
The production leans into Rocky Horror’s inclusive flirtation with experimentation and self-expression. Just as Studio 54 famously offered a space for flamboyance and boundary-pushing, Frank-N-Furter’s castle stages Janet’s sexual awakening and champions the show’s rallying cry: “Don’t Dream It, Be It.” Designers and performers aimed to preserve that welcoming invitation to be the weirdest, truest version of yourself—an ethos they say connects the musical to the nightclub’s legacy.
Pinkleton and the cast have, in their own way, made Studio 54 home for the show. They’ve left traces—hidden gems and sequins—in the theater and allowed the building’s character to inform the production rather than be smoothed over. For Pinkleton, Rocky Horror is uncontainable: a prism of contradictions and complexities that resists tidy explanations and remains meaningful to many people. Staged within Studio 54, the revival leans into that rambunctious energy, smashing theatrical history and venue myth together to create a version of Rocky that feels like it could only exist in that particular, glittering, slightly decrepit space.
