Dear Friend,
I am enclosing information about Oh! Calcutta! -- The World's Longest Running Erotic Stage Musical! -- in the DVD format. As a member of a book-reading/theater-going social group in the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Areas, I along with nineteen other members attended a weekday-evening performance of this play in its opening week in San Francisco in August 1969. All of us had front-row seats! Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the production. The DVD version was released on November 30, 2004. In December 2004, I ordered this DVD from an Internet source, the one with the lowest price. After all these years the one Oh! Calcutta! cast-member name I remembered was that of Margo Sappington. Seeing her performance in the DVD, it became clear why I remembered. She, as both choreographer of the entire production and performer, more than anyone else, was responsible for the show's huge success. One writer in 1970 best described her as the remarkable wonder who was clearly born to dance naked and teach others the same. This DVD motivated me to catch up on Margo's career. Margo Sappington - Dancer-Choreographer Extraordinaire is the result of my Internet search. Her list of wide-ranging achievements is extraordinary; my summary is far from being complete, however.
Sincerely,
Massageprac


Oh! Calcutta! – The World’s Longest Running Erotic Stage Musical!

Oh! Calcutta! creators include John Lennon, playwright-screenwriters Robert Benton and David Newman, Samuel Beckett, Jules Feiffer, Dan Greenburg, Leonard Melfi, Sam Shepard, Sherman Yellen, artist Clovis Trouille, director Jacques Levy, choreographer Margo Sappington, and author-critic Kenneth Tynan who devised the entire production. The music and lyrics were composed by Robert Dennis, Peter Schickele, and Stanley Walden.

(Original, Musical, Revue) May 11, 1969 – Aug 12, 1972
Eden Theatre (Off-Broadway) May 11, 1969 – 39 preview performances – premiered on
Jun 17, 1969 – Feb 24, 1971 – 704 performances
Belasco Theatre (Broadway) Feb 25, 1971 – Aug 12, 1972 – 610 performances
Total performances: 1314

(Revival, Musical, Revue) Sep 24, 1976 – Aug 6, 1989
Edison Theatre (Broadway)
Total performances: 5959

Cast: Performers (1969 -- 1972)
*Opening Night Off-Broadway Cast including Katie Drew-Wilkinson, Boni Enten, Alan Rachins, Leon Russom
**Replacement Cast members
Produced by Hillard Elkins
Conceived and Directed by Jacques Levy
Lyrics and music by The Open Window (Robert Dennis, Peter Schickele, Stanley Walden) and Jacques Levy
Production supervised by Michael Thoma

*Mark Dempsey
**Patricia Hawkins
*George Welbes
**Mitchell McGuire
*Nancy Tribush
*Bill Macy
*Raina Barrett
**Gary Rethmeir
**Samantha Harper
*Margo Sappington (also choreographer and contributing writer)

Skits and dances:
Taking Off the Robe (Oh! Calcutta!) - opening -- MD, PH, GW, MM, NT, BM, RB, GR, SH, MS - entire ensemble
Jack & Jill -- PH & GW
Dear Editor - Suite for Five Letters - five on stools -- MD, PH, MS, NT, GW
Dick & Jane - bedroom NYC apt. - post-coital conversation -- MM & NT
Sincere Replies - swingers -- GR, NT, BM, MS
Delicious Indignities - late Victorian London -- SH & MD
Was It Good for You, Too? (I Like the Look) - sex experiment -- SH, GR, NT, BM, MD, RB, plus MS, PH, GW, MM
Much Too Soon - dance in woodland and on raft on pond -- RB & MD, PH & MM, NT & BM, SH & GR, MS & GW, all five couples repeated once -- entire ensemble
One on One (Clarence & Mildred) pas de deux - dance on stage -- MS & GW
Rock Garden - rocking chairs -- BM & MM
Four in Hand - masturbatory -- GR, BM, MM, GW
Coming Together, Going Together (Don’t Have a Song to Sing – I’m an Actor – Ballerina – I Want It – Freeze Music – I Want It) - finale -- entire ensemble


Elkins Productions International Corporation and Colormedia Communications Corporation in early September 1970 filmed on videotape a performance of Oh! Calcutta! with the presence of an audience at the off-Broadway Eden Theatre for presentation by pay-per-view closed-circuit in-theater cable television. Arrangements were made with 250 theaters in the US for the filmed play’s showing. The filmed play was shown in only 50 theaters because local censorship banned its showings elsewhere. A prologue was added in 1982 for the VidAmerica videocassette release: the marquee of the Edison Theatre on Broadway is shown displaying Oh! Calcutta!, and the show is described as being in its fourteenth year in New York, and as having played to over 80 million people worldwide, in 140 cities in 15 countries. (By 1987 it had played in some 250 cities worldwide and had grossed $360 million.) The Obsession Entertainment DVD version with a run time of 123 minutes, encompassing the 1970 stage production videotape and the 1982 prologue of the videocassette release, together with the usual added DVD features, was released on November 30, 2004.

Oh! Calcutta! with its nudity and genital-to-genital contact was the first erotic revue to exploit and explode the theatrical scene by pushing boundaries further than had ever been tried before. Many New York theater reviewers disliked the show, failing to see the wit in the several amusing skits, ignoring the well-crafted music composed for the production, and overlooking the incredibly beautiful choreography.

The first of many subsequent Oh! Calcutta! companies was the San Francisco production, which opened in August 1969. Herb Caen, the famed San Francisco columnist, called the production “brilliant.” At the time San Francisco was the only other city where performance of the show was permitted. The second subsequent company was the Los Angeles production, which opened in March 1970, and the third, the London production, which opened in July 1970.

Among the seventeen or so of the show’s creators, the youngest at twenty-one and also the youngest member of the cast, Margo Sappington, as both choreographer of the entire production and performer, made the greatest artistic and most enduring contribution. Sherman Yellen, one of the show’s playwright-screenwriters, wrote, “the naked pas de deux was choreographed and performed by the brilliant Margo Sappington and served as inspiration for many future dances that would use the naked human body to explore sexuality and movement.” Stanley Walden, one of the show’s composers, wrote, “the pas de deux – a nude ballet – to a country rock song I wrote with Margo Sappington. It’s difficult to convey to somebody today how exciting and refreshing the work on Oh! Calcutta! was. There was the thrilling sense of discovery, of breaking through, and of doing this on a very richly produced and significant level.”


Margo Sappington – Dancer-Choreographer Extraordinaire

Margo Sappington, international choreographer and director, creates works for dance companies worldwide. Her professional debut as a dancer was in New York City with The Joffrey Ballet in 1965. Her first Broadway appearance was in 1968 as dance captain and performer in the musical comedy, Promises, Promises. Ms. Sappington made her choreographic debut in the off-Broadway (and later Broadway) musical revue, Oh! Calcutta!, in which she also appeared, performing roles as actress and lead dancer. Among the seventeen or so of this show’s creators in early 1969, the youngest at twenty-one and also the youngest member of the cast, Margo Sappington, as both choreographer of the entire production and performer, made the greatest artistic and most enduring contribution. She garnered notices for her composition of and performance in the show’s memorable dance sequences – the highlight being the stunning nude ballet One on One pas de deux. One writer described her as the remarkable wonder who was clearly born to dance naked and teach others the same. She was also effectively the associate director of and performed in the show’s San Francisco, Los Angeles, and London productions. She, as director, later, in 1977, staged Oh! Calcutta! and performed in it at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami. Her Coconut Grove Playhouse credits also include Miami Lights (choreography/featured role), Song and Dance (choreography), and Real Men (featured role), which opened January 7, 2005.

Her credits include work as choreographer on several other Broadway musicals: Where’s Charley? (1974), Pal Joey (1976), Play Me a Country Song (1982), and Doonesbury (1983). Inspired by great artists, her creations include: Rodin, Mis En Vie (1974) for the Harkness Ballet; Under the Sun (1976) for the Pennsylvania Ballet, on the works of Alexander Calder; Virgin Forest (1986) for the Milwaukee Ballet, based on the life and jungle paintings of Douanier Rousseau; and Toulouse-Lautrec (2000) for the Ballet du Capitole in Toulouse, France, with the cooperation of Le Musée Toulouse-Lautrec.

In 1980, Ms. Sappington was the choreographer for the acclaimed San Francisco Opera production of Saint-Saens’ Samson and Delilah, which was internationally simulcast from the War Memorial Opera House.

In 1971, Ms. Sappington received a commission from Robert Joffrey to create Weewis, and in 1993, she contributed Slide to the Joffrey’s full evening ballet, Billboards, with music by Prince, performed across the USA and broadcast on PBS television. For Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, she created Cobras in the Moonlight, And Now This, Step out of Love, and Mirage. Her creations also include: For Ella (2000) for the New Jersey Ballet, ZuZu Lounge (2002) for the Kansas City Ballet, and Unveiling the Curve (2003) for River North Chicago. In 2001, she collaborated with the Indigo Girls, performing live on stage, to create Shed Your Skin for the Atlanta Ballet. Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival commissioned her to create Foxtrot for Orchestra (set to John Adams' The Chairman Dances, a suite from his classic opera Nixon in China), with the world premiere on June 18, 2005.

For the Nederlands Dans Theater, Ms. Sappington created Juice (1975) and Face Dances (1977). She was the first American choreographer to create an original work, Heliotrope, for the Central Ballet of China (Beijing, 1988). In Caracas, Venezuela, she choreographed the dance drama, Juliana (1993), a collaboration for Rajatabla Danza and Ballet Nuevo Mundo.

In 1992, Margo Sappington created the new solo, Blue Angel, for her friend Valentina Kozlova, the 1979 Soviet émigré Bolshoi Ballet lead ballerina, to premiere on her second return to Moscow, where, in 1991, due to Glastnost, she was afforded a triumphant return at the Kremlin Palace. In 1995, Ms. Sappington and Ms. Kozlova established their own chamber dance company, The Daring Project, as a ballet company dedicated to performing new works. This collaboration continues to produce new works for Ms. Kozlova, many of which have been performed on national and international tours. Ms. Sappington choreographed a new pas de deux Calling in 1999 to mark the 20th anniversary of Ms. Kozlova's defection from the Soviet Union.

Ms. Sappington has contributed to countless TV commercials and music videos.
birthrightUUC@yahoo.com

On Rockland World Radio from The Hudson House in Nyack, Rockland County, New York, Alison Crowther, the Rockland Arts Host, interviewed, on April 26, 2005, Valentina Kozlova and Margo Sappington. These ladies are close friends of one another. The 63-minute program with these ladies is delightful. Listen to this archived recorded broadcast at website: http://www.rocklandworldradio.com/program/rarts

massageprac
birthrightUUC@yahoo.com

Dear Friend,
I am enclosing information about Oh! Calcutta! -- The World's Longest Running Erotic Stage Musical! -- in the DVD format. As a member of a book-reading/theater-going social group in the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Areas, I along with nineteen other members attended a weekday-evening performance of this play in its opening week in San Francisco in August 1969. All of us had front-row seats! Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the production. The DVD version was released on November 30, 2004. In December 2004, I ordered this DVD from an Internet source, the one with the lowest price. After all these years the one Oh! Calcutta! cast-member name I remembered was that of Margo Sappington. Seeing her performance in the DVD, it became clear why I remembered. She, as both choreographer of the entire production and performer, more than anyone else, was responsible for the show's huge success. One writer in 1970 best described her as the remarkable wonder who was clearly born to dance naked and teach others the same. This DVD motivated me to catch up on Margo's career. Margo Sappington - Dancer-Choreographer Extraordinaire is the result of my Internet search. Her list of wide-ranging achievements is extraordinary; my summary is far from being complete, however.
Sincerely,
massageprac


Oh! Calcutta! – The World’s Longest Running Erotic Stage Musical!

Oh! Calcutta! creators include John Lennon, playwright-screenwriters Robert Benton and David Newman, Samuel Beckett, Jules Feiffer, Dan Greenburg, Leonard Melfi, Sam Shepard, Sherman Yellen, artist Clovis Trouille, director Jacques Levy, choreographer Margo Sappington, and author-critic Kenneth Tynan who devised the entire production. The music and lyrics were composed by Robert Dennis, Peter Schickele, and Stanley Walden.

(Original, Musical, Revue) May 11, 1969 – Aug 12, 1972
Eden Theatre (Off-Broadway) May 11, 1969 – 39 preview performances – premiered on
Jun 17, 1969 – Feb 24, 1971 – 704 performances
Belasco Theatre (Broadway) Feb 25, 1971 – Aug 12, 1972 – 610 performances
Total performances: 1314

(Revival, Musical, Revue) Sep 24, 1976 – Aug 6, 1989
Edison Theatre (Broadway)
Total performances: 5959

Cast: Performers (1969 -- 1972)
*Opening Night Off-Broadway Cast including Katie Drew-Wilkinson, Boni Enten, Alan Rachins, Leon Russom
**Replacement Cast members
Produced by Hillard Elkins
Conceived and Directed by Jacques Levy
Lyrics and music by The Open Window (Robert Dennis, Peter Schickele, Stanley Walden) and Jacques Levy
Production supervised by Michael Thoma

*Mark Dempsey
**Patricia Hawkins
*George Welbes
**Mitchell McGuire
*Nancy Tribush
*Bill Macy
*Raina Barrett
**Gary Rethmeir
**Samantha Harper
*Margo Sappington (also choreographer and contributing writer)

Skits and dances:
Taking Off the Robe (Oh! Calcutta!) - opening -- MD, PH, GW, MM, NT, BM, RB, GR, SH, MS - entire ensemble
Jack & Jill -- PH & GW
Dear Editor - Suite for Five Letters - five on stools -- MD, PH, MS, NT, GW
Dick & Jane - bedroom NYC apt. - post-coital conversation -- MM & NT
Sincere Replies - swingers -- GR, NT, BM, MS
Delicious Indignities - late Victorian London -- SH & MD
Was It Good for You, Too? (I Like the Look) - sex experiment -- SH, GR, NT, BM, MD, RB, plus MS, PH, GW, MM
Much Too Soon - dance in woodland and on raft on pond -- RB & MD, PH & MM, NT & BM, SH & GR, MS & GW, all five couples repeated once -- entire ensemble
One on One (Clarence & Mildred) pas de deux - dance on stage -- MS & GW
Rock Garden - rocking chairs -- BM & MM
Four in Hand - masturbatory -- GR, BM, MM, GW
Coming Together, Going Together (Don’t Have a Song to Sing – I’m an Actor – Ballerina – I Want It – Freeze Music – I Want It) - finale -- entire ensemble


Elkins Productions International Corporation and Colormedia Communications Corporation in early September 1970 filmed on videotape a performance of Oh! Calcutta! with the presence of an audience at the off-Broadway Eden Theatre for presentation by pay-per-view closed-circuit in-theater cable television. Arrangements were made with 250 theaters in the US for the filmed play’s showing. The filmed play was shown in only 50 theaters because local censorship banned its showings elsewhere. A prologue was added in 1982 for the VidAmerica videocassette release: the marquee of the Edison Theatre on Broadway is shown displaying Oh! Calcutta!, and the show is described as being in its fourteenth year in New York, and as having played to over 80 million people worldwide, in 140 cities in 15 countries. (By 1987 it had played in some 250 cities worldwide and had grossed $360 million.) The Obsession Entertainment DVD version with a run time of 123 minutes, encompassing the 1970 stage production videotape and the 1982 prologue of the videocassette release, together with the usual added DVD features, was released on November 30, 2004.

Oh! Calcutta! with its nudity and genital-to-genital contact was the first erotic revue to exploit and explode the theatrical scene by pushing boundaries further than had ever been tried before. Many New York theater reviewers disliked the show, failing to see the wit in the several amusing skits, ignoring the well-crafted music composed for the production, and overlooking the incredibly beautiful choreography.

The first of many subsequent Oh! Calcutta! companies was the San Francisco production, which opened in August 1969. Herb Caen, the famed San Francisco columnist, called the production “brilliant.” At the time San Francisco was the only other city where performance of the show was permitted. The second subsequent company was the Los Angeles production, which opened in March 1970, and the third, the London production, which opened in July 1970.

Among the seventeen or so of the show’s creators, the youngest at twenty-one and also the youngest member of the cast, Margo Sappington, as both choreographer of the entire production and performer, made the greatest artistic and most enduring contribution. Sherman Yellen, one of the show’s playwright-screenwriters, wrote, “the naked pas de deux was choreographed and performed by the brilliant Margo Sappington and served as inspiration for many future dances that would use the naked human body to explore sexuality and movement.” Stanley Walden, one of the show’s composers, wrote, “the pas de deux – a nude ballet – to a country rock song I wrote with Margo Sappington. It’s difficult to convey to somebody today how exciting and refreshing the work on Oh! Calcutta! was. There was the thrilling sense of discovery, of breaking through, and of doing this on a very richly produced and significant level.”


Margo Sappington – Dancer-Choreographer Extraordinaire

Margo Sappington, international choreographer and director, creates works for dance companies worldwide. Her professional debut as a dancer was in New York City with The Joffrey Ballet in 1965. Her first Broadway appearance was in 1968 as dance captain and performer in the musical comedy, Promises, Promises. Ms. Sappington made her choreographic debut in the off-Broadway (and later Broadway) musical revue, Oh! Calcutta!, in which she also appeared, performing roles as actress and lead dancer. Among the seventeen or so of this show’s creators in early 1969, the youngest at twenty-one and also the youngest member of the cast, Margo Sappington, as both choreographer of the entire production and performer, made the greatest artistic and most enduring contribution. She garnered notices for her composition of and performance in the show’s memorable dance sequences – the highlight being the stunning nude ballet One on One pas de deux. One writer described her as the remarkable wonder who was clearly born to dance naked and teach others the same. Kathleen Tynan, in The Life of Kenneth Tynan, writing about her first visit to a dress rehearsal for a preview performance, said: “the sight of the glorious body of Margo Sappington dancing the cancan wearing nothing but a carnation between her legs was amazing.” Ms. Sappington was also effectively the associate director of and performed in the show’s San Francisco, Los Angeles, and London productions. She, as director, later, in 1977, staged Oh! Calcutta! and performed in it at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami. Her Coconut Grove Playhouse credits also include Miami Lights (choreography/featured role), Song and Dance (choreography), and Real Men (featured role), which opened January 7, 2005.

Her credits include work as choreographer on several other Broadway musicals: Where’s Charley? (1974), Pal Joey (1976), Play Me a Country Song (1982), and Doonesbury (1983).

Inspired by great artists, her creations include: Rodin, Mis En Vie (1974) for the Harkness Ballet; Under the Sun (1976) for the Pennsylvania Ballet, on the works of Alexander Calder; Virgin Forest (1986) for the Milwaukee Ballet, based on the life and jungle paintings of Douanier Rousseau; and Toulouse-Lautrec (2000) for the Ballet du Capitole in Toulouse, France, with the cooperation of Le Musée Toulouse-Lautrec.

In 1980, Ms. Sappington was the choreographer for the acclaimed San Francisco Opera production of Saint-Saens’ Samson and Delilah, which was internationally simulcast from the War Memorial Opera House.

In 1971, Ms. Sappington received a commission from Robert Joffrey to create Weewis, and in 1993, she contributed Slide to the Joffrey’s full evening ballet, Billboards, with music by Prince, performed across the USA and broadcast on PBS television. For Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, she created Cobras in the Moonlight, And Now This, Step out of Love, and Mirage. Her creations also include: For Ella (2000) for the New Jersey Ballet, ZuZu Lounge (2002) for the Kansas City Ballet, and Unveiling the Curve (2003) for River North Chicago. In 2001, she collaborated with the Indigo Girls, performing live on stage, to create Shed Your Skin for the Atlanta Ballet. Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival commissioned her to create Foxtrot for Orchestra (set to John Adams' The Chairman Dances, a suite from his classic opera Nixon in China), with the world premiere on June 18, 2005.

For the Nederlands Dans Theater, Ms. Sappington created Juice (1975) and Face Dances (1977). She was the first American choreographer to create an original work, Heliotrope, for the Central Ballet of China (Beijing, 1988). In Caracas, Venezuela, she choreographed the dance drama, Juliana (1993), a collaboration for Rajatabla Danza and Ballet Nuevo Mundo.

In 1991, Margo Sappington created the new solo, Blue Angel, for her friend Valentina Kozlova, the 1979 Soviet émigré Bolshoi Ballet lead ballerina, to premiere on her return to Moscow, where, due to Glastnost, she was afforded a triumphant reception at the Kremlin Palace. In 1995, Ms. Sappington and Ms. Kozlova established their own chamber dance company, The Daring Project, as a ballet company dedicated to performing new works. This collaboration continues to produce new works for Ms. Kozlova, many of which have been performed on national and international tours. Ms. Sappington choreographed a new pas de deux Calling in 1999 to mark the 20th anniversary of Ms. Kozlova's defection from the Soviet Union.

Ms. Sappington has contributed to countless TV commercials and music videos.
birthrightUUC@yahoo.com

Updated corrected version

Dear Friend,
I am enclosing information about Oh! Calcutta! -- The World's Longest Running Erotic Stage Musical! -- in the DVD format. As a member of a book-reading/theater-going social group in the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Areas, I along with nineteen other members attended a weekday-evening performance of this play in its opening week in San Francisco in August 1969. All of us had front-row seats! Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the production. The DVD version was released on November 30, 2004. In December 2004, I ordered this DVD from an Internet source, the one with the lowest price. After all these years the one Oh! Calcutta! cast-member name I remembered was that of Margo Sappington. Seeing her performance in the DVD, it became clear why I remembered. She, as both choreographer of the entire production and performer, more than anyone else, was responsible for the show's huge success. One writer in 1970 best described her as the remarkable wonder who was clearly born to dance naked and teach others the same. This DVD motivated me to catch up on Margo's career. Margo Sappington - Dancer-Choreographer Extraordinaire is the result of my Internet search. Her list of wide-ranging achievements is extraordinary; my summary is far from being complete, however.
Sincerely,
massageprac


Oh! Calcutta! – The World’s Longest Running Erotic Stage Musical!

Oh! Calcutta! creators include John Lennon, playwright-screenwriters Robert Benton and David Newman, Samuel Beckett, Jules Feiffer, Dan Greenburg, Leonard Melfi, Sam Shepard, Sherman Yellen, artist Clovis Trouille, director Jacques Levy, choreographer Margo Sappington, and author-critic Kenneth Tynan who devised the entire production. The music and lyrics were composed by Robert Dennis, Peter Schickele, and Stanley Walden.

(Original, Musical, Revue) May 11, 1969 – Aug 12, 1972
Eden Theatre (Off-Broadway) May 11, 1969 – 39 preview performances – premiered on
Jun 17, 1969 – Feb 24, 1971 – 704 performances
Belasco Theatre (Broadway) Feb 25, 1971 – Aug 12, 1972 – 610 performances
Total performances: 1314

(Revival, Musical, Revue) Sep 24, 1976 – Aug 6, 1989
Edison Theatre (Broadway)
Total performances: 5959

Cast: Performers (1969 -- 1972)
*Opening Night Off-Broadway Cast including Katie Drew-Wilkinson, Boni Enten, Alan Rachins, Leon Russom
**Replacement Cast members
Produced by Hillard Elkins
Conceived and Directed by Jacques Levy
Lyrics and music by The Open Window (Robert Dennis, Peter Schickele, Stanley Walden) and Jacques Levy
Production supervised by Michael Thoma

*Mark Dempsey
**Patricia Hawkins
*George Welbes
**Mitchell McGuire
*Nancy Tribush
*Bill Macy
*Raina Barrett
**Gary Rethmeir
**Samantha Harper
*Margo Sappington (also choreographer and contributing writer)

Skits and dances:
Taking Off the Robe (Oh! Calcutta!) - opening -- MD, PH, GW, MM, NT, BM, RB, GR, SH, MS - entire ensemble
Jack & Jill -- PH & GW
Dear Editor - Suite for Five Letters - five on stools -- MD, PH, MS, NT, GW
Dick & Jane - bedroom NYC apt. - post-coital conversation -- MM & NT
Sincere Replies - swingers -- GR, NT, BM, MS
Delicious Indignities - late Victorian London -- SH & MD
Was It Good for You, Too? (I Like the Look) - sex experiment -- SH, GR, NT, BM, MD, RB, plus MS, PH, GW, MM
Much Too Soon - dance in woodland and on raft on pond -- RB & MD, PH & MM, NT & BM, SH & GR, MS & GW, all five couples repeated once -- entire ensemble
One on One (Clarence & Mildred) pas de deux - dance on stage -- MS & GW
Rock Garden - rocking chairs -- BM & MM
Four in Hand - masturbatory -- GR, BM, MM, GW
Coming Together, Going Together (Don’t Have a Song to Sing – I’m an Actor – Ballerina – I Want It – Freeze Music – I Want It) - finale -- entire ensemble


Elkins Productions International Corporation and Colormedia Communications Corporation in early September 1970 filmed on videotape a performance of Oh! Calcutta! with the presence of an audience at the off-Broadway Eden Theatre for presentation by pay-per-view closed-circuit in-theater cable television. Arrangements were made with 250 theaters in the US for the filmed play’s showing. The filmed play was shown in only 50 theaters because local censorship banned its showings elsewhere. A prologue was added in 1982 for the VidAmerica videocassette release: the marquee of the Edison Theatre on Broadway is shown displaying Oh! Calcutta!, and the show is described as being in its fourteenth year in New York, and as having played to over 80 million people worldwide, in 140 cities in 15 countries. (By 1987 it had played in some 250 cities worldwide and had grossed $360 million.) The Obsession Entertainment DVD version with a run time of 123 minutes, encompassing the 1970 stage production videotape and the 1982 prologue of the videocassette release, together with the usual added DVD features, was released on November 30, 2004.

Oh! Calcutta! with its nudity and genital-to-genital contact was the first erotic revue to exploit and explode the theatrical scene by pushing boundaries further than had ever been tried before. Many New York theater reviewers disliked the show, failing to see the wit in the several amusing skits, ignoring the well-crafted music composed for the production, and overlooking the incredibly beautiful choreography.

The first of many subsequent Oh! Calcutta! companies was the San Francisco production, which opened in August 1969. Herb Caen, the famed San Francisco columnist, called the production “brilliant.” At the time San Francisco was the only other city where performance of the show was permitted. The second subsequent company was the Los Angeles production, which opened in March 1970, and the third, the London production, which opened in July 1970.

Among the seventeen or so of the show’s creators, the youngest at twenty-one and also the youngest member of the cast, Margo Sappington, as both choreographer of the entire production and performer, made the greatest artistic and most enduring contribution. Sherman Yellen, one of the show’s playwright-screenwriters, wrote, “the naked pas de deux was choreographed and performed by the brilliant Margo Sappington and served as inspiration for many future dances that would use the naked human body to explore sexuality and movement.” Stanley Walden, one of the show’s composers, wrote, “the pas de deux – a nude ballet – to a country rock song I wrote with Margo Sappington. It’s difficult to convey to somebody today how exciting and refreshing the work on Oh! Calcutta! was. There was the thrilling sense of discovery, of breaking through, and of doing this on a very richly produced and significant level.”


Margo Sappington – Dancer-Choreographer Extraordinaire

Margo Sappington, international choreographer and director, creates works for dance companies worldwide. Her professional debut as a dancer was in New York City with The Joffrey Ballet in 1965. Her first Broadway appearance was in 1968 as dance captain, performer, and understudy
in the musical comedy, Promises, Promises. Ms. Sappington made her choreographic debut in the off-Broadway (and later Broadway) musical revue, Oh! Calcutta!, in which she also appeared, performing roles as actress and lead dancer. Among the seventeen or so of this show’s creators in early 1969, the youngest at twenty-one and also the youngest member of the cast, Margo Sappington, as both choreographer of the entire production and performer, made the greatest artistic and most enduring contribution. She garnered notices for her composition of and performance in the show’s memorable dance sequences – the highlight being the stunning nude ballet One on One pas de deux. One writer described her as the remarkable wonder who was clearly born to dance naked and teach others the same. Kathleen Tynan, in The Life of Kenneth Tynan, writing about her first visit to a dress rehearsal for a preview performance, said: “the sight of the glorious body of Margo Sappington dancing the cancan wearing nothing but a carnation between her legs was amazing.” Ms. Sappington was also effectively the associate director of and performed in the show’s San Francisco, Los Angeles, and London productions. She, as director, later, in 1977, staged Oh! Calcutta! and performed in it at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami. Her Coconut Grove Playhouse credits also include Miami Lights (choreography/featured role), Song and Dance (choreography), and Real Men (featured role), which opened January 7, 2005.

Her credits include work as choreographer on several other Broadway musicals: Where’s Charley? (1974), Pal Joey (1976), Play Me a Country Song (1982), and Doonesbury (1983).

Inspired by great artists, her creations include: Rodin, Mis En Vie (1974) for the Harkness Ballet; Under the Sun (1976) for the Pennsylvania Ballet, on the works of Alexander Calder; Virgin Forest (1986) for the Milwaukee Ballet, based on the life and jungle paintings of Douanier Rousseau; and Toulouse-Lautrec (2000) for the Ballet du Capitole in Toulouse, France, with the cooperation of Le Musée Toulouse-Lautrec.

From 1979 to 1982 Ms. Sappington worked with the San Francisco Opera as the choreographer for the acclaimed productions of Verdi’s Aida, Ponchielli’s La Gioconda, and Saint-Saens’ Samson and Delilah, which were internationally simulcast from the War Memorial Opera House.

In 1971, Ms. Sappington received a commission from Robert Joffrey to create Weewis, and in 1993, she contributed Slide to the Joffrey’s full evening ballet, Billboards, with music by Prince, performed across the USA and broadcast on PBS television. For Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, she created Cobras in the Moonlight, And Now This, Step out of Love, and Mirage. Her creations also include: For Ella (2000) for the New Jersey Ballet, ZuZu Lounge (2002) for the Kansas City Ballet, and Unveiling the Curve (2003) for River North Chicago. In 2001, she collaborated with the Indigo Girls, performing live on stage, to create Shed Your Skin for the Atlanta Ballet. Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival commissioned her to create Foxtrot for Orchestra (set to John Adams' The Chairman Dances, a suite from his classic opera Nixon in China), with the world premiere on June 18, 2005.

For the Nederlands Dans Theater, Ms. Sappington created Juice (1975) and Face Dances (1977). She was the first American choreographer to create an original work, Heliotrope, for the Central Ballet of China (Beijing, 1988). In Caracas, Venezuela, she choreographed the dance drama, Juliana (1993), a collaboration for Rajatabla Danza and Ballet Nuevo Mundo.

In 1991, Margo Sappington created the new solo, Blue Angel, for her friend Valentina Kozlova, the 1979 Soviet émigré Bolshoi Ballet lead ballerina, to premiere on her return to Moscow, where, due to Glastnost, she was afforded a triumphant reception at the Kremlin Palace. In 1995, Ms. Sappington and Ms. Kozlova established their own chamber dance company, The Daring Project, as a ballet company dedicated to performing new works. This collaboration continues to produce new works for Ms. Kozlova, many of which have been performed on national and international tours. Ms. Sappington choreographed a new pas de deux Calling in 1999 to mark the 20th anniversary of Ms. Kozlova's defection from the Soviet Union.

Ms. Sappington has contributed to countless TV commercials and music videos.

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Gimme the DVD....

The Very First Nudie Musical
How Oh! Calcutta! brought genitalia to Broadway.

By Peter Landau

Oh! Calcutta! (Picture: 1) deserves the double exclamation marks. It could use a few more and that still wouldn't evoke the play's impact on American society. It may seem tame nowadays, but then the sight of a fully nude cast on Broadway was not only arousing, it was revolutionary.
First performed in an old Yiddish theater on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which had previously been a burlesque house, Oh! Calcutta! premiered in 1969. "A year that was delightful for sexual peace," remembers Hillard Elkins, the show's producer. He adds with pride that it was "the first time a production anyplace in the world, besides from National Geographic, had full-frontal nudity."
In 1971 the play was broadcast on pay-for-view, and a copy of that original videotape has been released by New Video Group, complete with a reproduction of the original 1971 Playbill.
What is most surprising about the show is not the nudity or the dated fashions, but actor Bill Macy, better known as the husband on the classic TV sitcom Maude, thrusting his limp member at the audience during the opening number.
"He was an out-of-work actor, a cab driver," says Elkins. He looks like he's enjoying the breast gropes of the naked cuties on stage a lot more than taking a fare across town. He was forty-five years old at the time but looks like a kid in a candy store. One sweet he even married, his co-star Samantha Harper (Picture: 1 - 2), a buxom brunette.
The play is a sex revue, complete with a live rock band, dance pieces, and comedy skits written by John Lennon, Samuel Beckett, Sam Shepard, and Jules Feiffer. Lennon's bit involved Macy and three other masturbators. Their sexual fantasies are broadcast on a large screen as they race to come, but just before climaxing Macy conjures the image of the Lone Ranger, complete with the cavalry charge from "The William Tell Overture."
"John spent a lot of time at [show creator/critic] Kenneth Tynan's house, with all of us, smoking pot and getting relaxed," says Elkins. "As a matter of fact, I had to rewrite John's piece because he had Custer's Last Stand. That didn't work, so I did the Lone Ranger thing."
The show eventually moved to Broadway, where it played for nearly twenty years, as well as twelve years in London and nine years in Paris. "It played all over the world, except for the Eastern Bloc, which we're working on," jokes Elkins. "I'd love to see this done in Johannesburg, South Africa, with a mixed black-and-white company."
But Elkins initially feared Oh! Calcutta! was doomed after opening-night notice came in. "It was called garbage and junk, but sexual garbage and sexual junk, and that word in a review sells tickets," he notes.
"It was supposed to be corny," Elkins says, defending the play. "The doctor's piece and the masturbatory piece were designed to be corny sex scenes. They weren't designed to be marvelous pieces of Shakespearean works that have some sexual overtones."
Angered by the critics' reactions, Elkins more than doubled the price of a ticket to $25. "If I'm going to get shot I might as well go out with a bang," Elkins says. "The next couple of nights we were standing in front of the theater and we watched the limos come up and the crowds coming in and the sell-out occurring. We were both stunned and delighted, and in a week we knew we had what could easily be termed a hit."
That success rests on the naked backs of the actors, especially those actresses that let their hairy freak flags fly. Besides Samantha Harper, Raina Barrett (Picture: 1 - 2), Patricia Hawkins (Picture: 1 - 2), Margo Sappington (Picture: 1 - 2), and Nancy Tribush (Picture: 1 - 2) left nothing to the imagination. But was it hard to get these serious dramatists to show some serious skin?
Elkins says that director Jacques Levy was also a psychologist, which was enormously helpful. "When we set the cast, what Jacques did was give them terrycloth robes, and they put all of their other clothes into storage," Elkins explains. "They worked with those robes, and those robes, as you probably know, tend to untie themselves. The first couple of days there was a lot of robe tying, but on the third day, less robe tying, and by the fourth day they were so delighted that they could work freely without being self-conscious the robes came off."
Elkins is currently working on developing a movie version of Cat's Cradle, the Kurt Vonnegut novel he bought the rights to thirty years ago, and a biopic on LSD guru Timothy Leary, but he still looks back fondly at Oh! Caclutta!
"It is what it is designed to be," he says, looking over the sea of time at the new DVD release. That may be, but would Elkins put his money where his mouth is--or, in this case, more appropriately, where his penis is? "Get naked on stage? Perhaps at that time I would. Now, I think I'm past the mark," admits the seventy-six-year-old producer.
He remembers that in those wild days of free expression there was but one rule in their production of the most notorious show ever staged. "Jacques Levy and I decided that no one would have sex with anyone else in the show. I think we're the only two who stuck to it," he laughs.
Since the show demystifies sex, it's only fitting to reveal the etymology of its title. Oh! Calcutta! is a play on the pun by Surrealist painter Clovis Trouille, "O quel cul t'as!" It's French for "What an ass you have!" And what an ass it is.

A new DVD release of Oh! Calcutta! by the New Video Group was made on May 30, 2006.

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A new DVD release of Oh! Calcutta! by the New Video Group was made on May 30, 2006. This DVD version has a run time of 122 minutes: 22 seconds, not Approx. 100 mins. as stated on the DVD case back insert. It does not include the 36-second 1982 prologue in front of the Edison Theatre that appears in the Obsession Entertainment DVD version released on November 30, 2004. It does feature the 20-page Playbill: The national magazine for theatregoers, Volume 8, Issue 12, December 1971, reproduction of the Belasco Theatre Oh! Calcutta! Program, which is replete with photographs of both the Eden Theatre, June 17, 1969, opening-night cast and the early September 1970 filmed-on-videotape-performance cast. With respect to the other DVD features, cast biographies and DVD credits listing six names are given. The Obsession Entertainment DVD version has brief biographies of Jacques Levy, Director and Contributing Writer, the Contributing Writers, and the Performers, with Margo Sappington as Choreographer, Contributing Writer, and Performer. There is little overlap in the cast biographies.

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