"This is very new territory for me," says Suzanne Shaw. "I'm going to be dancing in my underwear, doing the salsa in Fifties knickers. I never even wore fishnet stockings in Hearsay."

With her blonde locks and girl-nextdoor demeanour, Shaw had no trouble finding work when the Popstars winners split in 2002, carving a path through musical theatre from Summer Holiday to Joseph. But this, she says, is the first time she has done something for an adult audience. And she's absolutely loving it.

"For the first time, I'm working with a director who goes, 'What do you want to do? How do you see your character?'"

she explains. "I feel I've actually had an involvement in what I do rather than being told to do this, do that."

With The Rocky Horror Show recently topping the People's Choice poll at London's Royal Court, this new production of Richard O'Brien's camp fantasy musical, immortalised in the 1975 film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, is perfectly timed.

The second show to be produced byBrighton's Theatre Royal, it has been given a faintly more serious edge in the hope of "reclaiming the show and making it more like a musical again than a rowdy rock concert". But rest assured, the outrageous songs and absurd plot, here narrated by Michael Aspel, remain in tact.

When newlyweds Brad and Janet break down in the middle of the countryside, they have no choice but to take refuge in a dark and daunting mansion.

Little could they imagine it is the lair of one Frank N Furter (here played by David Bedella of Jerry Springer The Opera), a transsexual from Transylvania who has been using its futuristic laboratories to build the ultimate man.

Needless to say, Janet soon finds out there is more to life than cashmere sweaters.

"I'm the only person who does two sex scenes," says Shaw. "At first, Janet's sweet and innocent but she has got this capacity to be really dirty. Once she has her first sex experience with Frank she just wants more and more."

Initially nervous about the decidedly adult nature of The Rocky Horror Show (for the first time, here, the sex scenes will be performed on stage rather than behind a screen), Shaw now seems fully to have embraced the spirit of Janet's transformation: She is currently in training for her next project, a pole dancing video, and will be bringing a mobile pole on tour to practice with.

She recently starred alongside Richard O'Brien during the panto season but although he told her she'd "make a good Janet", it seems there was one piece of information the Rocky creator was withholding.

In December, he disclosed that he'd written a sequel entitled Rocky Horror Rises and that he was hoping this tour would provide him with some ready guinea pigs.

"I will catch up with the tour somewhere," he said, "and entice the performers to read the new one. Hopefully by then my writing partner Richard Hartley will have come up with some tunes for the songs and one evening after the show, we'll put some microphones on the stage and get an audience in to see if it works - see if it has got any mileage, see if they laugh at the jokes and sing along with the songs."

"Oh wow!" enthuses Shaw, "he certainly kept quiet about that one. He's supposed to be coming to the Brighton show. I'm gonna get on the phone to him right now!"

Starts at 7.45 Thursday, 6pm and 9pm on Friday and Saturday. Tickets cost £18-£19, call 08700 606650.