Back on the Bawds

When the nude revue Oh! Calcutta! opened in New York in 1969, it became at once an asterisk in theatrical history. Devised by Britain's man-about-the-theater Kenneth Tynan, it sought unabashedly to tap the voyeur market -- or rather, that part of it unwilling to get its jollies in a topless go-go bar. Tynan's tease was dressed up with skits by Samuel Beckett, Jules Feiffer and Tennessee Williams, among others, and it was billed as an evening of "elegant erotica." Outraged clerics and unimpressed critics called it other things, but Calcutta ran three years in New York (where it is now being revived) -- and it is still running in London where it opened six years ago.

Its continuing box office appeal may have been one reason why Tynan, 49, decided to go back on the bawds with a successor to Calcutta. Somewhat coyly called Carte Blanche and co-produced by Hillard Elkins, Tynan's Calcutta confrere, the project was not without risk. As Elkins noted: "Calcutta was easier in a way because nothing like it had been done before. Now we are competing with other sexual shows and films." Or, to put it in terms that Gypsy Rose Lee would understand: After you take it all off, what do you do for an encore?

One solution is to concede that Calcutta may not have been so elegantly erotic, after all. Carte Blanche, says Tynan, "is a more ambitious show than Calcutta, which had inevitable crudities and had to be more aggressive because it was trying to establish a beachhead." This time he has sought "elegant candor." In lieu of such Calcutta concerns as masturbation, rape and wife swapping, what would Carte Blanche offer?

Well, among other things, there is a geriatric gang bang, a ballet stressing the sexual symbolism of motorcycles, and a sketch about a young man's sexual initiation into a jaded Restoration court where the male courtiers are equipped with waving phalluses.

Museum Piece. The initiation rite carries the cachet of having been quilled in the 17th century by the Earl of Rochester (Tynan unearthed parts of it in the archives of the Victoria and Albert Museum). Other notable contributors include 19th century French Symbolist Poet Paul Verlaine, French Playwright Eugene Ionesco and Tynan himself. As director, Tynan chose another Calcutta alumnus, Clifford Williams, formerly of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Last week, after two years of preparation and backed by a budget of $200,000, Carte Blanche finally opened. What the raised curtain revealed, reported TIME Correspondent Lawrence Malkin, was some parts that could be called cousins of Calcutta and others that amounted to "a granddaddy of a snappy nightclub revue, liberated to let a lot of old-fashioned smut happily hang out." In short, Carte Blanche works best when the 14-member cast has its clothes on. That turns out to be most of the time. True, the opening scene has them emerging frontally naked from behind shiny, plastic drapes, but within seconds their bare bodies become moving screens for a slide show projecting brilliant patterns of Op art, leopard skins and whirls of color.

One of the most successful numbers is a heavily costumed, surrealistic mime-ballet that counterpoints the love music of Wagner and Mozart. Even the Earl of Rochester's bit has its moments, with four-letter words being structured into feminine Alexandrines. The show ends with the company singing a refrain that goes: "Stroke me, strip me, scratch me, whip me -- and I'll do the same to you." Somehow they make it sound like good, clean fun. Carte Blanche received mixed reviews from London critics. But, as with Calcutta, it will be the box office that counts. If it hits, it will inevitably set sail for New York.

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