Oh! Calcutta!
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- For the Lawrence Arms album, see Oh! Calcutta! (album).
Oh! Calcutta! was a long-running theatrical revue, debuting off-Broadway in 1969, created by British critic Kenneth Tynan. Tynan had hoped that Harold Pinter would direct to give the production avant-garde legitimacy but Pinter declined. Most of the sketches (written by Samuel Beckett (Breath), John Lennon, Sam Shepard and Jules Feiffer, among others) featured the cast naked (including Bill Macy). Peter Schickele (aka “PDQ Bach”) and Robert Dennis were two of the revue's composers. A pay-per-view video production played on closed-circuit TV in select cities in 1971, and a motion picture version was also released — in both cases many cities and municipalities banned its showing. A 1976 Broadway revival lasted 13 years, briefly becoming the longest-running play in Broadway history, with a total of 5959 performances.
The title is from Clovis Trouille's pun on "O quel cul t'as!", French for "What an ass you have!".
In 2005, drum-and-guitar breaks from a 1970 instrumental cover version of Oh! Calcutta!'s title song by funk group The Meters were sampled by producer Rich Harrison, to provide the main loops of the hit single One Thing by R&B singer Amerie.de:Oh! Calcutta! nl:Oh Calcutta