Jonathan Adams, Dr Everett Scott (a Rival Scientist) of Rocky Horror fame, dead at 74
The Independant
John Adams (Jonathan Adams), artist and actor: born Northampton 14 February 1931; married 1969 Julia Vezza (marriage dissolved 1976); died London 13 June 2005.
As a boy in Northampton Jonathan Adams happened to see the 1920 film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and he decided there and then he wanted to be an actor or an artist. In the event he became both. Art and acting struggled for supremacy for much of his early life but eventually complemented one another - and he was never a bored “rester”. As an actor he is best remembered for creating the part of the Narrator in The Rocky Horror Show. As an artist, his last exhibition, “Jonathan Adams in Wonderland”, opened in London at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, in April.
It all began in his Northampton Grammar School days when he set up the “Ramblers Acting Company” (with himself in the lead roles) and published a short-lived Boy’s Own-type magazine in which his own stories owe much to Edgar Allan Poe. He also fabricated a sort of camera obscura through which he beamed images on to paper which then served as a base for his first, surreal drawings and paintings.
At last in 1972 the call that mattered came and he found himself engaged to play the Narrator in The Rocky Horror Show.
The show began its tumultuous life in June 1973 as a six-week project at the Royal Court’s humble Theatre Upstairs. Adams helped to develop his part during rehearsals with the author, Richard O’Brien, and director, Jim Sharman, and none of them had any idea what a wild success it would be. Two years later it was filmed as The Rocky Horror Picture Show with Adams, who by this time had become bored with the Narrator role, taking on instead the rather larger part of the weird professor Dr Everett Scott (a Rival Scientist). In 1990 he resumed the Narrator role for a revival at the Piccadilly Theatre. Both film and play drew a cult following, especially in the United States, and for some years Adams attended the annual convention there and was feted by his fans.
