‘Time Warp’ Review: Local Rocky Horror Play Becomes Urgent Queer Doc

Allison Berg’s queer-tastic new documentary, “Time Warp,” boasts an impressive pedigree of executive producers: Josh Gad, Billy Porter, and John Cameron Mitchell among them. They’ve likely all at one point touched the cultural third rail that is “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” the exuberantly, unapologetically queer even before we had the words to say it rock-opera musical in which so many film fans and LGBTQ audiences have seen their authentic selves. Or at least the versions they can’t put to words when they’re living in, say, Rock Springs, Wyoming.

Enter the Starling Company, led by charismatic nonbinary drag performer Kenny Starling, to bring Jim Sharman’s film and Richard O’Brien’s source-material musical flagrantly, brazenly back into the local consciousness. In Berg’s earnestly told, sprawlingly ensembled documentary, Starling’s troupe of queer and straight folks of all ages mount an inaugural local production in 2022, with a diverse cast of characters worthy of the humor and heart of a Christopher Guest mockumentary. While this Tribeca Festival premiere — which has gone on to play numerous queer film festivals from Frameline to Outfest — runs a bit long and feels narratively rangy, it’s worth celebrating for how joyfully those involved express themselves. Especially the youngsters.

“Queer joy,” as Starling points out, isn’t all rainbows: It comes from an often terrorized, even animal state when sexuality is stifled by policy. Wyoming, as “Time Warp” underlines, unfortunately hosts an alarming suicide rate, especially among young people. And it isn’t hard to guess why. Rock Springs, meanwhile, isn’t far from Laramie, where Matthew Shepard became the casualty of a hate crime in 1998, and the poster boy for a movement that, in the grand scheme, is still only finding its footing.

The South Carolina-born Starling is mounting a local-theater production of “Rocky Horror” with a troupe of thespians — several of the youngest whose parents don’t know their involvement — at the 350-seat Broadway Theater. Starling details their own struggles with identity, pitching them more broadly to an alternately curious and wary city council that is attempting censorship on the project, which will put the drag-forward aesthetic of “Rocky Horror” front and center for a community not exactly accustomed to such gender-bending forms of political expression. They’re up against the likes of a Trump-supporting veteran staging a “First Amendment” protest outside the theater, who is nonplussed as to what to say about the suicide rates in Wyoming.

Some are more comfortable than others with staging the show, like high schoolers Bones and Megan, best friends who have grounded heads on their shoulders about how they’ve been ostracized by their broader communities. Other members of the cast are older, and have a more generational tie to what “Rocky Horror” means in queer culture — and why it’s still on drag stages and in repertory theaters to this day. But what’s most heartening is how “Time Warp” shows the locals rallying around the production, including at a drag-centric promotional performance near a casino in which Starling takes the stage in all their powdered- and glammed-up glory.

Berg previously shined a light on a queer emblem in her documentary “The Dog” about John Wojtowicz, the man who inspired “Dog Day Afternoon” (and most recently a Broadway show), and who robbed a Brooklyn bank to try and pay for his partner’s gender confirmation surgery. “Time Warp” carries an even more timely political message about discrimination, especially in light of right-wing movements that oppose the freedom of existence of queer people like the ones in this film.

At nearly 100 minutes, “Time Warp” could’ve used more editorial discipline, as the actors and their plights get lost in a shuffle of an ensemble. I suspect that running time had to do with not wanting to part ways with meaningful footage of the subjects, who all deserve a piece of the story. The footage of the actual inaugural “Rocky Horror” performance buckles a bit under draggy asides. But for those keen on hope in times like these, “Time Warp” is a vital story told with warmth and wit, with subjects who likely didn’t need a camera to turn on their charisma.