Post-War England: Kenneth Tynan was an intellectual who attended Oxford and later made his name as a firebrand London theatre critic. His newspaper critiques could make or break a stage production.
November 1965: Tynan was the first person to ever drop the F-bomb on a live BBC telecast. The quote: “I doubt if there are any rational people to whom the word 'fuck' would be particularly diabolical, revolting or totally forbidden.”
That televised remark set British society ablaze.
Tynan relished controversy.
1969: He got some of his celebrity friends to write material for a risqué stage revue satirizing the Sexual Revolution. Each short sketch would focus on sex.
And each cast member would occasionally appear onstage completely naked.
Among the show’s contributors along with Tynan were playwright and American actor Sam Shepard, Irish author Edna O’Brien, Theater of the Absurd’s Samuel Beckett, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and John Lennon (then still a Beatle).
Richard Schickele, aka PDQ Bach, among others created the revue’s music.
The show was called Oh, Calcutta!, which was a pun regarding a painting titled ‘O quel cul t’as!’ The French translation: “Oh, what an ass you have!”
As the title suggests, the revue could be both intellectually witty and bluntly sophomoric.
Despite being promoted as a musical, there was almost no singing. The music was mostly instrumental for dance numbers.
The twelve sketches - split into two acts - opened with the 10-member cast, men and women, appearing in bathrobes. No dialogue. They performed an interpretive dance in the nude.
The next sketch, Jack and Jill, showed a boy coercing a reluctant girl into exploring their bodies. The scene concluded with rape that left Jill traumatized.
In a sketch styled like a Neil Simon play, a young married couple invited swingers to their apartment only to discover they’re middle-aged weirdos.
Another sketch had a teenage man volunteering for a sex experiment that devolved into a Marx Brothers routine.
John Lennon’s contribution was called Four in Hand, a short sketch about men playing a masturbation game.
The finale included the entire cast onstage in full frontal nudity as they formed a chorus line that simulated intercourse.
Oh, Calcutta! premiered off-Broadway in Greenwich Village in June 1969 where it ran for two years.
In 1971, it debuted on Broadway and ran for a year and a half. Reviews were mixed.
London 1970: Oh, Calcutta! debuted and had to contend with obscenity charges. It then ran in various West End theaters for 10 years.
The revue returned to Broadway in 1976.
Times Square in the 70s was filled with XXX-rated porn theaters and open prostitution. A nude stage play was tame by comparison. It prospered.
The revival ran for 13 years; in total, nearly 6,000 performances. One of the 12 longest runs in Broadway history.
Kenneth Tynan received limited profits from the production. The intellectual could write but apparently couldn’t read a contract.
From 1976 to its close in 1989, Oh, Calcutta! held its own against shows like A Chorus Line, Chicago, Annie, Ain’t Misbehavin’, Evita, and Sweeney Todd.
The show has not aged well and by modern standards seems amateurish. If theater critic Tynan were alive today and if he hadn’t been involved, one has to wonder what sort of critique he would write.
ALSO
One of the original cast members was Bill Macy who would later appear as the husband on the TV sitcom Maude. He was age 50 during Oh, Calcutta! and appeared in the nude nightly.
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