Word: tynan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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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...
...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...
...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...
Complemented intellectually by Kenneth Tynan in the subsidiary role of literary manager, Olivier led the National to eclectic pinnacles of dramatic art. But in a decade's time, ill health and some ill-conceived productions brought about Olivier's resignation. His successor was no surprise. Between 1960 and 1968, Peter Hall had revolutionized the playing of Shakespeare, created the Royal Shakespeare Company and made it a national theater of high-styled stature. The bristly-bearded Hall-part dynamo, part diplomat, and possessed of a driving will-is peculiarly fitted to meet the challenge that lies ahead in forging...
...biographies, though it has a tendency to tiptoe all about its subject. Some negative observations are offered about Lord Olivier's vulgarities and his tendency to rant. But the book is mainly an enlarged poster of theatrical quotes: "Range and virtuosity"-James Agee; "Unforgettable"-Kenneth Tynan; "The most lovable person in the theater''-Dame Sibyl Thorndyke; "Simplicity and humility"-Kirk Douglas...