HOW apt that should Ben Freeman's Brad Majors should have to miss Monday's opening night on account of a "pulled muscle".

Had his indisposition been announced in such a way over the Tannoy, no doubt it would have been met with a suitably saucy shout-out by audience members, whose custom is to hurl orchestrated abuse at the stage.

I say "audience members", but each visit of Richard O'Brien's fantastical freak show – a kind of time-warped Weimar pantomime for adults – is more like a cult reunion. Imagine Roald Dahl's The Witches, except that Rocky devotees don't hide their true selves en route to their gatherings. Instead they positively flaunt a compulsion to dress up in burlesque finery, the men as much as the women, looking not dissimilar, it must be said, to the weekend carnage of York's stag and hen parties.

The Grand Opera House staff enter the spirit too, the ushers quick to join the usherettes in skirts and high heels, drawing wolf whistles from approving punters.

All this has been the way for more than 40 years now, and still curious new converts go through the initiation process, "dragged" along by the hardcore Horror hordes to experience its codes of conduct and bizarre conventions, albeit that the shout-out interjections have become all the more important, now that confetti, rice, flames and water pistols have been banned.

O'Brien's over-the-top B-movie and sci-fi send-up has returned to York this week for the first time since the 40th anniversary tour in 2013, and once more director Christopher Luscombe is at the helm. It is not a show for non-believers, it needs your exuberant commitment, and like Berwick Kaler's pantomimes, its plot is less important than its characters and set-pieces.

Steve Punt, normally to be found in the company of fellow satirical humorist Hugh Dennis, is flying solo here in his new guise as the Narrator. He looks suitably as stuffy as a Fifties news presenter in his smoking jacket, somewhat awkward in such strange company and yet smarter than all around him, with his topical dig at David Cameron's tax returns and his quick retorts.

Diana Vickers is a perky new addition as Janet, transforming from innocent sweetheart to minx; Ben Kerr capably fills the other Ben's shoes as Brad, and Kristian Lavercombe’s sly Riff Raff is still the scene-stealer, but Liam Tamne's transsexual Transylvanian Frank-N-Furter is too frank, too base, without the grace and fabulous swagger of Oliver Thornton in 2013. Be rude and fruity, by all means, but go too crude and it becomes fruitless. Dominic Andersen's buff, gilt-dusted Rocky judges it far better.

The raucous pastiche of Fifties' rock'n'roll music flags in the second half and by comparison with last time, this Rocky Horror Show ends up a little limp in this fabulous new age of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert.

Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york