Jackie Clune on The Rocky Horror Show, Motherland and live theatre

Jackie, known for her work on both stage and screen, was also missing performing. As she prepares to play the Narrator in the Rocky Horror Show when it comes to Sheffield later this month, she says the pandemic made her reflect on the buzz of TV and theatre.

“I’m a horrible show off like most performers, even the artiest,” she says. “It takes a certain sort of person to want to get up and show their knickers as it were in front of everyone. Above and beyond that, I’m a very social person, and I’m a very political person. And I really believe in groups of people coming together. I believe in communities and I think theatre really gives you that. What’s great about The Rocky Horror Show is that it feels like a church in a way, a group of like-minded people all coming together and celebrating.”

The Rocky Horror Show is celebrating its 50th anniversary, touring the country until August this year, to many a sell-out crowd. It’s a far cry from how the production first began life in 1973, performed before an audience of just 63 people in the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs.

Success came quickly though. It transferred to the Chelsea Classic Cinema, before going on to run at the Kings Road Theatre until 1979 and then the Comedy Theatre in the West End until 1980.

In 1975 it was adapted into a film - The Rocky Horror Picture Show – which took over $135 million at the Box Office and is still shown in cinemas around the world more than 40 years after its premiere, making it the longest running theatrical release in cinema history.

Stars including Russell Crowe, Jason Donovan and Meatloaf have appeared in show over the past 45 years, with celebrities such as Stephen Fry, Ade Edmondson, Mel Giedroyc and Richard O’Brien playing The Narrator when a live screening was broadcast to more than 600 cinemas across the UK and Europe in 2015 in aid of Amnesty International.

“There’s a song every thirty seconds and they’re all bangers so I think it will run and run,” says Jackie of the show’s success. "To be involved in the 50th anniversary is a huge pleasure and also a huge responsibility,” she continues, “because the show is so well known by everyone who comes to see it. It’s really humbling to see the people who come to the show again and again dressed up in fantastic costumes.

"They know the script probably better than we do. It’s a real joy, it’s what live theatre is all about. And I think people are loving it more now because we had the pandemic getting in the way of people being able to meet together. It feels like a real celebration.”

Her appearance in the show is taking her back to the start of her career, which began in cabaret and stand up comedy. “I get to flex those muscles a bit in this, which has been really fun,” she says. “I don’t sing in the show [though] and I love to sing...I think the older I get the fewer singing parts there are for me and I miss that.”

Essex-born Clune got her break through her Edinburgh Fringe one-woman cabaret shows and her Karen Carpenter tribute act. Her first job after graduating university was as a lecturer in drama at the Royal Holloway in London – but she wouldn’t rush back into teaching. “By the time I left I hated it because like everything in this bloody country it started to feel more and more like you were running a business and that’s not what I went into it for.

"I went into it as a genuine academic with interest in delivering really good education and doing some exciting research. But increasingly you had to tick boxes and fulfil quotas and make sure you had certain output as an academic. I couldn’t do that as well as act as well as provide decent lecturers and seminars for students so it started to feel too much.”

Clune is known for her work both on stage and screen including in Mamma Mia, Billy Elliot and Motherland, the TV sitcom exploring the trials and traumas of parenthood. “It’s such a fun show and it speaks to so many women and men of a certain generation who struggle with staying sane and having children,” she says.

For Clune though, there’s nothing quite like the buzz of a live performance. “That’s what I love the most, being on stage in front of a live audience, there’s nothing like it. I just wish it paid better…People don’t realise how badly paid actors often are – and stage managers, and directors, and designers and dancers. We might look all stardust and shiny up there but a lot of people are living really hand to mouth.”

She’s a vice-president for Equity, a union of more than 47,000 performers and creative practitioners, united in the fight for fair terms and conditions in the workplace.

“Increasingly as I get older I don’t really want to do anything that doesn’t really mean anything to me,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be really lofty. Rocky Horror isn’t exactly a lofty, intellectual drama but it is about difference and it is about diversity and it’s about giving people chance to express themselves in a less conservative way. I like shows that have some kind of social meaning, I think that’s what drives me now.”

Jackie Clune is playing the Narrator in the Rocky Horror Show which is coming to the Sheffield Lyceum Theatre, January 23 – 28. Visit rockyhorror.co.uk