Oh! Calcutta!

After the musical Hair combined a little nudity with a lot of witty, tuneful songs, Oh Calcutta came along and combined a lot of nudity with a number of remarkably dull sketches.

For the most part, these sketches appear to have a humorous intent, yet none of them come close to be really funny, although one short sketch about masturbating is mildly amusing. And at the end the actors put words in the mouths of the audience, and some of those lines are actually pretty good.

My first inclination was to stop watching altogether, but when I looked up the play in Wikipedia I saw that the sketches had been written by a number of famous people, including Jules Pfeiffer and Sam Shepard. So what I did was, I would watch the first few minutes of a sketch, fast forward when I got bored, check out a little of the sketch later on to see if it got better, which it never did, and go to the next sketch.

There are also a couple of naked dance numbers, which, like everything else, aren't especially good. And there are a few songs, co-written by the guy who created P.D.Q. Bach, that are really cheesy and bland.

In terms of the filming of the play, the beginning is awful. You see the audience (clearly not a real audience but actors chosen to look like an uptight crowd) and then backstage footage of the actors. Then there's some annoying video effects when the play starts. After that the director settles down for the most part and just lets the play unfold, but since it's a bad play, that's little comfort.

Why was Oh Calcutta one of the longest running Broadway plays? I've got to assume it's all the naked people. I think at the time it just seemed daring to go watch naked people grope each other on stage and talk about masturbation and wife swapping. It was transgressive and revolutionary. Unfortunately, it was also really bad.

It's so annoying that there's video of the original Oh Calcutta but none, so far as I can tell, of the original Hair. All we have is that horrible movie made in the seventies in which they took the name and a few of the songs and created something new and much worse. How is that fair?

I was 10, hiding under the dining table, while my parents thought I was asleep, I was watching Oh! Calcutta on the Dutch tv. It was an eyeopener for me, and though it caused a lot of upheaval in the media the next day, it showed that times where changing and that people no longer let there lives be ruled by others but made choices for themselves. In some ways, Oh! Calcutta was just fun. And the music was definately good. It is only a few years ago that it was first shown in Israel...a sign that in some countries of the world you are not as free as in others. Where gay marriage is normal in Holland, and gays are put to prison or to death in some other countries, sexual freedom is also not the same everywhere. Oh! Calcutta was a clear sign of the times, and still is a pleasure to watch.

Filmed record of the live stage play (complete with an upscale audience arriving confused and leaving bored). It begins behind the scenes just prior to curtain with the male and female actors in the dressing room completely naked applying body make-up to various body parts and discussing if they should invite relatives to the play which will feature scenes in which the entire cast is...naked. The play begins with the actors lined up across the stage slowly dancing...naked. What follows is a series of comedic musical sex skits (mostly unfunny) with many of the players...naked. After you see the actors cavort naked together the rest is anticlimatic and boring. Bill Macy of TV's "Maude" dangles his privates as if he were playing percussion instruments. If that's not enough to avoid this film I don't know what is. Raina Barrett and Samantha Harper are cute and nice to look at though. Nudity was a brave new world to off-Broadway and the actors were all pretty brave to risk exposure (sorry for the pun) to ridicule. It is obvious that the nude actors find support and comfort appearing in mass with the other nude actors. More than once we see them in a huddle. I saw a revival a few years back and that same uneasiness did not exist (the lead female was an ex-Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader and centerfold). Each of those actors were of the new breed which would be comfortable soloing nude on stage. The audience was expecting a strip show, and got it.

Oh Calcutta! can not be revived anymore than the sixties can. The pioneers of nude theater were pioneers but looking back there's really not much to see. Oh Calcutta! still exists, without the male actors, in strip joints across America.

If you're into nostalgia for the 60's and 70's this film of the stage play is a good choice. Like a 60's commune or "house" you will find a make-shift family looking to explore their sexuality safely amongst those they can trust. The actors are naked much of the time and the play is about sex, however it is packaged with statements about choice, freedom, and trust. With these three virtues, nudity and sex lose their sense of taboo. In fact, I found the characters respecting each other more when they were undressed! The filmed audience seemed like explorers wondering what this was all about and walked away at the end of the show somehow a little relieved that it wasn't as pornographic as they had thought it would be. Not just clothes were removed in Oh! Calcutta, but taboos too.

In the early eighties I was in a revival-sequel called Calcutta Revisited! with a small experimental theater group. Looking back I believe most of the actors got involved because we wanted to see each other naked. We were all closet exhibitionists who wanted a chance to see what it was like to be nude on stage with strangers, family, and friends looking on. The audience was an equal mix of the avant garde art house crowd weened on female performance artists smearing peanut butter on their breasts, lesbians who heard about my passion filled kissing scenes with two other actresses, nerdy guys who read about the play in the weekly reader, and of course our friends, family members, co-workers from our day jobs, roomies, and neighbors. The audience walked away a little disappointed that it wasn't a bit more pornographic. Full frontal nudity was no longer enough even with the addition of the lesbian scenes.

So please rent Oh Calcutta! (if you can find it) and visit a period of our past that wasn't so bad.

Oh Calutta was edited at Teletape Studios in New York City. I was 28 years old when I edited this video. It was edited on 2 inch tape using the first electronic editing system called Editec. We spent many days and nights working on the piece. I remember my car was towed away twice during the edit sessions. The video was to be shown on closed circuit video projection to a number of theaters around the country but many had to cancel because of protests. A poor quality film was made from the video tape and shown in theaters along with "Fritz the Cat". I was surprised when I discovered the video had been made into a DVD. Where was the original tape all these years?