Nude Frontier

Nude Frontier-There is a kind of reverse snobbism in the theater these days in which the drawing room apes the gutter and nudity is the ultimate in chic. Such plays can be crude (Che!), deviant (Geese) or playful (Hair). For a good part of the evening, Oh! Calcutta! is diverting and civilized, though it scarcely provides the "elegant erotica" that Kenneth Tynan promised when he devised the show. Far from being a sexual stimulant, Oh! Calcutta! is an anaphrodisiac.

So much word-of-mouth stimulation preceded opening night as to make the evening almost anticlimactic. The rumor was that Oh! Calcutta!, appropriately housed in an off-Broadway theater renamed Eden, would be a nude frontier in permissive theater. In an anticipatory dither, sophisticated and not so sophisticated New Yorkers rushed to the box office to make the show's 41 previews sellouts. They verified the rumor. Oh! Calcutta! is the nudest show outside a nudist camp. Though the top price on the scale is $7.50 for an orchestra seat, scalpers have collected $20 and more. On July 8th the box-office price goes to $15, and the following month to $25. That will make Oh! Calcutta! the highest-priced show on or off Broadway. With more than $103,000 in advance sales already made, Hillard Elkins is living the producer's dream--which is not to give a four-letter word about the critics' reviews. Less than five years ago, legal obstacles and moral outcries would have prevented Elkins from even opening the show, but none have currently been raised.

The format of Oh! Calcutta! is rather like that of short short stories and cartoons strung together in the revue fashion of a supper-club show. Though the program does not say who wrote what, the playwrights include Samuel Beckett, Dan Greenburg, Jules Feiffer, John Lennon, Leonard Melfi, Sam Shepard, Tynan himself, and others. Their playlets will doubtless enhance their royalties if not their reputations.

Volunteers for Science. One convulsively funny item is a spoof on the measurement of human sexual responses. Two volunteers for science strip to the buff, are maneuvered into position on a wheeled table and plastered with sensing devices. These are wired to a console that lights up like a berserk jukebox as the couple begins intercourse. To complete the burlesque, a Harpo Marxish doctor hovers around, leering at the pair with the added cyclopean eye of a dental mirror. Other skits treat oral sex and masturbatory fantasies with sportive humor, and the sprinkling of quadriliterals beginning with the letters f, c, and s are more festive than aggressive. A dance of love has the silvery sensuousness of a pas de deux performed under the moon, and Director Jacques Levy elicits cast responses that are fluid, intimate, and disciplined.

Oh! Calcutta! not only offers the most nudity but the handsomest nudes on the New York stage, trim-muscled men and lovely girls. Why does it fail to stimulate eroticism? The answer is that no member of a theater audience is unaware of the rest of the audience, and this communal group consciousness inhibits erotic response. If it gets a minus on eroticism, Oh! Calcutta! gets two plusses for the laughter it evokes and its rousing celebration of the body beautiful.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.