(1971) 1.5 Michael Buening In 1969, famed British theater critic Kenneth Tynan assembled the likes of John Lennon, Sam Shepard, and Samuel Beckett to create an erotic off-Broadway comedy and ended up with a series of Benny Hill outtakes peppered with total nudity called Oh! Calcutta! The show ran for 20 years and for a time was the longest running show in Broadway history. New Video NYC has recently released a 1971 television taping (for pay per view) of the show so inquiring minds can ply the more curious corners of the sexual revolution. In their one good packaging conceit, the liner notes consist of the show's 1971 Playbill program (with a few unrelated articles taken out) that helps to place the show in a historical context and bolsters what is the show and DVD's greatest value as an archeological curiosity and a snapshot of a less sexually inhibited artistic climate. Besides a few video effects used during the opening credits and a dance shot on location in a park, the show is pretty much taped as-is from the audience's perspective. The skits are remarkably similar; most of them open with a randy young male trying to convince his wife/girlfriend to swing/role play/indulge a fetish. What's not that amusing starts to become creepy after watching an endless parade of ladies pushed into sex acts against their will. Overall, there is an obsession that free love may be passing these men by and a wink-wink-nod to the audience that we know what it's all about, although it's not clear that the authors really do. They are a few worthwhile moments. One sketch, "Delicious Indignities," where an 18th century fop tries to seduce an innocent maiden with sexual traps that backfire, is funny as a whole because it has been structured as a comic bit of which sex is the topic, not an excuse to say naughty words for a laugh. While the comedy wallows in the juvenile, the modern dance sequences highlight the show's irritating tendency to revert to arty nonsense whenever it becomes insecure about its essential nature as a glorified burlesque show. However, choreographer Margo Sappington, with her partner George Welbes, perform a routine, "One on One," that successfully traverses the high and low aspirations. In a refreshingly sophisticated but not pretentious way, the dance illustrates Woody Allen's dictum that sex is only dirty if it's done right. The rest of the show is not erotic, primarily because it views sex as either a cheap joke or ethereal wonder without anything human, animal, complicated, awkward, or recognizably real in between.

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Oh! Calcutta! (1971)

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Nudity
Not For Children
Adult Humor

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Satire

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Performance

directed by

Guillaume Martin Aucion

countries

USA

released

1971

run time

105 min.

produced by

Elkins, Cinemation

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by Judd Blaise synopsis

A production of Oh! Calcutta!, the late-'60s off-Broadway play that received infamy as the first nude musical, is captured here. The film is a record of the play rather than a cinematic adaptation, leaving its staging, revue-like structure, and frankly sexual content intact.

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- Sex

- Stage

- Play [recreation]

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Oh! Calcutta! on AllMovie

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