Oh! Calcutta!
 | The content of this page is outdated If you have checked or updated this page and found the content to be suitable, please remove this notice. |
Oh! Calcutta! is a play with music (but not a Musical). Famous mostly for the amount of nudity involved, the play has seen several long running revivals on both Broadway and the West End.
 | This page needs a better description. You can help this wiki by expanding or clarifying the information given. |
Tropes used in Oh! Calcutta! include:
- Bilingual Bonus: The play was named after a painting of the same name. It's a French pun meaning (roughly) "Oh, what a lovely ass!"
- Dance Party Ending: Arguable.
- A Date with Rosie Palms: One of the sketches is about a masturbation contest.
- Also, it was assumed that more than 90% of the people going to see the show were guys getting their rocks off.
- Dream Ballet
- Hello, Nurse!: Appropriately enough, the nurse in the Doctor's Office sketch.
- Hey, It's That Guy!: Bill Macy[1] was in the original cast and the video version made for Pay Per View in 1971; starting in 1972, he played Maude Findlay's husband, Walter.
- Loads and Loads of Writers: Sketches were written by (among others) John Lennon, Sam Shepard and Samuel Beckett.
- Long Runner: Oh! Calcutta! was the longest-running revue on Broadway, was the longest running revival and is currently[when?] the fifth-longest run for any Broadway play. (The sixth-longest runner, Chicago, will pass it sometime in mid-2011 if it doesn't close.)
- Male Frontal Nudity: Oh! So much!
- Mood Whiplash: At the end of the "Jack and Jill" sketch, Jack rapes Jill, leaving her alone and comatose at the top of the hill.
- Popcultural Osmosis: You know of this play as "that naked show" even if you don't know anything else about it.
- Rape as Drama: See Mood Whiplash.
- Sketch Comedy: The show generally.
- Small Reference Pools: There have been other plays with lots of nudity, but with the possible exception of Hair, this is the most famous (and Hair doesn't have much nudity in it anyway, just a little bit at the end of Act I).
- A Worldwide Punomenon: Oh! Calcutta! is a pun on the French phrase "Oh, quel cul t'as!", meaning, "Oh, what an ass you have!" The writers of the show didn't come up with it, though -- it's the title of a painting by artist Clovis Trouille called "Oh! Calcutta! Calcutta!", depicting a nude woman from behind, of course. A reproduction of the painting was prominently featured in the show during (at least) its original run.
- ↑ not William H. Macy