"of ""Oh! Calcutta!"" in 1969 was another important victory in that campaign. Tynan was fiercely against censorship and was determined to break taboos that he considered arbitrary. Tynan's left-wing politics and lifestyle made him something of a poster boy for 1960s radical chic and champagne socialism in London. He suffered a serious personal defeat in the National's internal battles over his support for the Rolf Hochhuth play ""Soldiers"", a controversial work highly critical of Winston Churchill, whose National Theatre production was eventually cancelled. An erotic revue which Tynan co-ordinated and partially wrote, called ""Oh! Calcutta!"", debuted in 1969 and became"
"the first production, his staging was altered to make the work fit in with the somewhat risque nature of the revue by adding naked bodies to the rubbish, suggesting that the work was about sexual intercourse. “In one of his few displays of public anger, Beckett called Tynan a ‘liar’ and a ‘cheat’, prompting Tynan to send a formal notice through his lawyers that he was not responsible for the travesty, which he claimed was due to others … Beckett decided the incident wasn’t worth the argument and dropped it.” “John Calder claims that Tynan commissioned it; but Ruby Cohn"
"Broadway show ever. The show sparked considerable controversy at the time, because it featured extended scenes of total nudity, both male and female. The title is taken from a painting by Clovis Trouille, itself a pun on """"O quel cul t'as!"""" French for ""What an arse you have!"". Tynan came up with the idea of putting on an erotic revue in the summer of 1966. Tynan had hoped that Harold Pinter would direct the production, in order to give it avant-garde legitimacy, but Pinter declined. Sketches were written by, amongst others, Samuel Beckett, John Lennon, Sam Shepard, Leonard Melfi, Edna"
"Kenneth Tynan Kenneth Peacock Tynan (2 April 1927 – 26 July 1980) was an English theatre critic and writer. Making his initial impact as a critic at ""The Observer"" (1954–58, 1960–63), he praised Osborne's ""Look Back in Anger"" (1956), and encouraged the emerging wave of British theatrical talent. In 1963, Tynan was appointed as the new National Theatre Company's literary manager. An opponent of theatre censorship, Tynan was considered by many to be the first person to say ""fuck"" on British television (although this is now disputed), which was controversial at the time. Later in his life, he settled in"
"one of the most successful theatre hits of all time. It included scenes written by various authors, including Samuel Beckett, Sam Shepard, John Lennon and Edna O'Brien, as well as music and featured frequent nudity. Tynan was a poor businessman, however, and the contracts he signed for the show brought him in only $250,000 out of the many millions it earned. In 1971, Tynan co-wrote with Roman Polanski the script of an unusually grim and violent screen adaptation of ""Macbeth"". In that same year, he returned to his childhood habit of keeping a journal, detailing his last few months at"
"the Royal National Theatre, which he finally left at the end of 1973 after being outmanoeuvred by its new artistic director, Peter Hall. In the mid-1970s, Tynan made various failed efforts to explore serious sexual themes. He researched and wrote half a book on Wilhelm Reich. His attempts to compile an anthology of masturbation fantasies foundered after being rebuffed by Vladimir Nabokov, Graham Greene, Samuel Beckett and others, and he couldn't raise enough money to finance a film about a sexual triangle. Sexual obsession and physical debility marked Tynan's last years, according to Johnson. Tynan's diaries, which he continued until"
"the banality of the morally conservative and formally restricted period of theatre that had preceded them. Theatre critic Kenneth Tynan, whilst working with Laurence Olivier as literary manager and Dramaturg of the National Theatre Company had been campaigning for liberalisation for many years. A prosecution had succeeded in 1966 against those responsible for producing Edward Bond's play ""Saved"" at the Royal Court and John Osborne's play ""A Patriot for Me"", cut by the censor, was put on at the Royal Court with the theatre turning itself into a private members' club. The strong response to these ""causes célèbres"" helped lead"
"Meanwhile, Schechner and Tulane Drama Review's editorial offices moved to NYU, where TDR was renamed ""The Drama Review"". On relocation to NYU, Schechner played a leading role in forming The Performance Group, which, in the Fall of 1968, began presenting ""Dionysus in '69,"" a contemporary revisitation of Euripides' ""The Bacchae"" as Environmental Theater. For ""Dionysus in '69,"" McNamara had designed a revolutionary set, which transformed the audience into citizens of the Greek city of Thebes and flowed the play's action over, through, and among them. In September, 1968, just before the play opened, McNamara joined Schechner in teaching at NYU's"
"Ginty"", transferred the play to an Irish Civil War setting. It was staged at Dublin's Gate Theatre. In 1969, Broadway impresario Jacques Levy (who had previously directed the first version of ""Oh! Calcutta!"") commissioned The Byrds' Roger McGuinn to write the music for a pop (or country-rock) version of ""Peer Gynt"", to be titled ""Gene Tryp"". The play was apparently never completed, although, as of 2006, McGuinn was preparing a version for release. Several songs from the abortive show appeared on the Byrds' albums of 1970 and 1971. In March 1972 Jerry Heymann's adaptation, called ""Mr. Gynt, Inc."", was performed"
"show's original runs in Edinburgh and the provinces in 1960 had had a lukewarm response. When the revue transferred to the Fortune Theatre in London, in a revised production by Donald Albery and William Donaldson, it became a sensation, thanks in some part to a favourable review by Kenneth Tynan. There were also a number of musical items in the show, using Dudley Moore's music, most famously an arrangement of the Colonel Bogey March which resists Moore's repeated attempts to bring it to an end. In 1962 the show transferred to the John Golden Theatre in New York, with its"
"original Broadway production: The musical ran on Broadway for over 1,500 performances and despite the long run, the musical lacked stellar reviews and lost money - more than $1.5 million - upon closure. Jekyll & Hyde (musical) Jekyll & Hyde is a musical horror-drama loosely based on the novella ""Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde"" by Robert Louis Stevenson. Originally conceived for the stage by Frank Wildhorn and Steve Cuden, it features music by Wildhorn, a book by Leslie Bricusse and lyrics by Wildhorn, Bricusse and Cuden. After a world premiere run in Houston, Texas, the musical embarked"
"to another director, Mike Nichols. While in Gstaad, Switzerland during the start of 1970, Polanski envisioned an adaptation of ""Macbeth"" and sought out his friend, British theatre critic Kenneth Tynan, for his ""encyclopedic knowledge of Shakespeare"". In turn, Tynan was interested in working with Polanski because the director demonstrated what Tynan considered ""exactly the right combination of fantasy and violence"". Tynan and Polanski found it challenging to adapt the text to suit the feel of the film. Tynan wrote Polanski, saying, ""the number one Macbeth problem is to see the events of the film from his point of view"". During"
"blissfully irreverent to Shakespeare and everything else...The humor of the show is light-fingered and lighthearted, and its vitality and charm are terrific. The music is always engaging.' "" Thomas S. Hischak (professor of theatre at the State University of New York College at Cortland and author) wrote that ""As cockeyed as the adaption was, with Shakespeare's Illyria now a gleaming steel Manhattan, the unpretentious show was a delight from start to finish."" Your Own Thing Your Own Thing is a rock-styled musical comedy loosely based on ""Twelfth Night"" by William Shakespeare. It premiered off-Broadway in early 1968. The music and"
"The Billy Barnes Revue The Billy Barnes Revue is a 1959 musical comedy revue with music and lyrics by Billy Barnes and sketches by Bob Rodgers. The revue premiered in Los Angeles in 1959 and went on to be produced both on Broadway and Off Broadway. The show is remembered for its acclaimed cast of newcomers, including Bert Convy and Ken Berry. Barnes continued to produce successful revues in Los Angeles. In 1952, actress Joyce Jameson graduated from UCLA and married songwriter Billy Barnes. Their first collaboration was a new musical comedy called ""Baby Face O'Flynn"", for which she wrote"
"greatest international success of its time with more than thirty different productions around the world between 1966 and 1969, often by notorious directors such as Peter Stein in Germany or Claude Régy in France. At that time, the play was controversial everywhere but is now considered as a 20th-century classic. After a few commissioned works (the British Empire satire ""Narrow Road to the Deep North"" (1968) for the Coventry People and City Festival, two agit-prop plays for festival performances, ""Black Mass"" (1970) to commemorate the Sharpeville Massacre and ""Passion"" (1971) for the CND Easter Festival), Bond composed his new major"
"A Theory of Justice: The Musical! A Theory of Justice: The Musical is a 2013 musical comedy by Eylon Levy, Ramin Sabi, Tommy Peto and Toby Huelin. Billed as ""an all-singing, all-dancing romp through 2,500 years of political philosophy"", the musical tells a fictionalised account of the writing of ""A Theory of Justice"" (1971), the classic philosophical treatise by American political philosopher John Rawls. It premiered in Oxford's Keble O'Reilly Theatre in January 2013 and was revived for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2013. In 2018, a reworked version was presented for a rehearsed reading in London's West End."
"to join him in writing the book for the stage. Brooks persuaded Mike Ockrent and his wife Susan Stroman to join the creative team as director and choreographer. After Ockrent's death in 1999, Stroman agreed to continue as both director and choreographer. In New York in 1959, theatre producer Max Bialystock opens ""Funny Boy"", a musical version of ""Hamlet"" (""Opening Night""). It is terrible, and the show closes after one performance. Max, who was once called the King of Broadway, tells a crowd of down-and-outs of his past achievements and vows to return to form (""King of Broadway""). The next"
"shows in London, most of which he subsequently toured internationally. Although he eventually gained worldwide popularity, he encountered stiff resistance in the early years of his career: his first London one-man show, ""A Nice Night's Entertainment"" (1962), received scathing reviews, and it was several years before he made a second attempt. He gained considerable notoriety with his next one-man revue, ""Just a Show"", staged at London's Fortune Theatre in 1969. It polarised the critics but was a hit with audiences and became the basis of a growing cult following in the UK. He built on this with his early '70s"
"English Protestants actually had more in common with one another through class than they had supposed, and that alleged barriers of religion and ethnicity were merely superficial and imposed by a fearful middle class. The book was banned in Ireland for unspecified reasons in 1958; the ban expired in 1970. In 1967, the story debuted as a play, adapted by Frank McMahon and staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, with Frank Grimes as the young Behan. The play was a great success, winning McMahon a Tony Award for his adaptation. The play remains popular with both Irish and American"
"in 1958, Tommy Steele in ""Half a Sixpence"" in 1963 (678 performances), Bruce Forsyth in ""Little Me"" in 1964 (334 performances), ""The Black Mikado"" (1975–76), and in the late 1970s the Kander and Ebb musical ""Chicago"" ran for 590 performances. More recently the 'rock'n'roll' musical ""Return to the Forbidden Planet"", which was based on Shakespeare's ""The Tempest"" and used 1950s and 1960s songs opened in September 1989 and lasted until early 1993, winning the Olivier Award for Best New Musical—beating the favourite, ""Miss Saigon"". The controversial show ""Jerry Springer - The Opera"" had a run from 14 October 2003 –"
"Dionysus in 69 (play) Dionysus in 69 was a theatrical production by The Performance Group (TGP), a New York-based experimental theatre group. ""Dionysus in 69"" was directed and conceived by TPG’s founder and long-time artistic director Richard Schechner. The stage play was an adaptation of Euripides' ""The Bacchae"". ""Dionysus in 69"" is an example of Richard Schechner’s practice of site-specific theatre as described in his 1973 book ""Environmental Theater"", utilizing space and the audience in such ways as to bring them in close contact with each other. ""Dionysus in 69"" challenged notions of the orthodox theatre by deconstructing Euripides' text,"
"the context of existing provincial attitudes which TAW is trying to change. The TAW started its venture in English language with Shakespeare’s ""Othello"" in 1966, Christopher Fry's poetic play ""A Phoenix too Frequent"" and Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist play ""The Lesson"" in 1967. In 1967 Raj Bisaria decided to produce and direct Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist ""In Camera"", Edna St. Vincent Millay’s ""Aria Da Capo"" and Ronald Duncan’s translation of 12th century classic ""Abelard and Heloise"" in a three-bill presentation, in November, 1967. These were crucial productions as TAW’s audience wavered between shocked admiration and shocked disgust. Raj Bisaria invited Delhi groups"
"composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. He wrote the pieces for a cappella SATB choir in 1951 for the British Federation of Music Festivals, and they remain a popular part of British choral repertoire today. Benjamin Britten The play was adapted into an opera, with music by Benjamin Britten and libretto by Britten and Peter Pears. The opera was first performed on 11 June 1960 at Aldeburgh. Moonwork The theatre company, Moonwork put on a production of ""Midsummer"" in 1999. It was conceived by Mason Pettit, Gregory Sherman and Gregory Wolfe (who directed it). The show featured a rock-opera version of the"
"Jekyll & Hyde (musical) Jekyll & Hyde is a musical horror-drama loosely based on the novella ""Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde"" by Robert Louis Stevenson. Originally conceived for the stage by Frank Wildhorn and Steve Cuden, it features music by Wildhorn, a book by Leslie Bricusse and lyrics by Wildhorn, Bricusse and Cuden. After a world premiere run in Houston, Texas, the musical embarked on a national tour of the United States prior to its Broadway debut in 1997. Many international productions in various languages have since been staged including two subsequent North American tours, two tours"
"roll rivals. The original 1960–1961 Broadway production was a Tony Award–winning success. It spawned a London production and several major revivals, a sequel, a 1963 film, and a 1995 television production. The show also became a popular choice for high school and college productions. The producer Edward Padula had the idea for a musical initially titled "" Let's Go Steady"", a ""happy teenage musical with a difference"". Padula contracted with two writers, and Charles Strouse and Lee Adams wrote seven songs for their libretto. Padula, Strouse and Adams sought Gower Champion as director/choreographer, who until that time had choreographed only"
"they are to be believed, would have filled the theatre several times over"". Reviews were mixed. Most of the critics who attended the first night felt it was a failure, and it looked as if the English Stage Company was going to go into liquidation. Milton Shulman in the ""Evening Standard"", for example, called the play ""a failure"" and ""a self-pitying snivel"". But the following Sunday, Kenneth Tynan of ""The Observer"" – the most influential critic of the day – praised it to the skies: 'I could not love anyone who did not wish to see ""Look Back in Anger"",'"
"UK should be grateful that the international version was shortened by 40 minutes, and termed it a ""rag-bag pantomime"". After its US release in 1959, Irene Thirer reviewed the film in the ""New York Post"" in which she praised its ""striking dramatic appeal"", but feared it might not be accepted by American audiences due to cultural differences. In a 1976 article in the journal ""Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review"", author Michael Gallagher found the film ""an amazing mixture of political allegory and cheap musical, a cross between the impressiveness of Eisenstein and the banality of ""Show Boat"""". The ""New Internationalist"""
"theatre critic until mid-1963 when he joined the National Theatre. In 1963, Laurence Olivier became the British National Theatre Company's first artistic director. Tynan had been highly dismissive of Olivier's achievements as artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre, which had opened in 1962, but he recommended himself for the role of literary manager. Olivier was initially outraged by Tynan's presumption but Olivier's wife, Joan Plowright, convinced him that Tynan would be an asset at the National Theatre Company, then based at the Old Vic theatre. When he became the National Theatre's literary manager, Tynan ceased to be the theatre"
"Wait a Minim! Wait a Minim! (1962-68) was a musical revue conceived by Leon Gluckman, with original songs by Jeremy Taylor, and a collection of international folk music arranged by Andrew Tracey. Many authentic instruments were played to accompany dances and pantomimes satirizing the national characteristics and political and social eccentricities of many different countries. The only spoken words were when the cast was introduced, and in the South African scene where apartheid was ridiculed. The revue originated in South Africa and toured Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and London before opening on Broadway in New York City. The show opened"
"Billy's passport problems and declares Moon ""harmless."" Moon indignantly pockets Oakleigh's check and refuses to return it. The musical had a tryout in Colonial Theatre (Boston), before opening on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre on November 21, 1934. It ran for 420 performances, becoming the fourth longest-running musical of the 1930s, despite the impact of the Great Depression on Broadway patrons' disposable income. Directed by Howard Lindsay with choreography by Robert Alton and sets by Donald Oenslager, it starred Ethel Merman as Reno Sweeney, William Gaxton as Billy Crocker and Victor Moore as Moonface Martin. Charles B. Cochran, a British"
"roles. Previously his productions of Shakespeare's ""As You Like It"" and Peter Luke's ""Hadrian VII"" had transferred from the old Birmingham Rep to London's West End, the latter going on to New York gaining Dews a Tony Award for its direction. Other notable productions at the Rep included ""Hamlet"", with Richard Chamberlain in 1969, ""Quick, Quick Slow"" (1969) a musical by Monty Norman and Julian More, based on a play by David Turner, who also scripted the musical, and ""The Sorrows of Frederick"", an epic play about Frederick the Great by Romulus Linney, in 1970. At the Chichester Festival Theatre"
"project for Broadway, ""The Freaking Out of Stephanie Blake"" (1967), a troubled production that never opened. His second Broadway play, ""Here's Where I Belong"", closed after one performance, in March 1968. Additional Broadway credits include several Shakespeare plays and revivals of ""Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"" (1974–75), ""The Royal Family"" (1975–76), ""Whodunnit"" (1982–83), and ""Show Boat"" (1983), among others. He was nominated for the Tony Award, Best Direction of a Musical, for ""Show Boat"" and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival as producing director of ""The Royal Family"". Kahn has also directed opera and regional theatre. He"
"(Peter Weiss); 1966), ""Next time I’ll sing to you"" (James Saunders; 1968), Jumpers (Tom Stoppard; 1974), ""The miracle in Šargan"" (Ljubomir Simović; 1975), ""The Mother"" (Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz; 1982), Big and Little (Botho Strauß; 1985), and ""Demons"" (Lars Norén; 1987). Major controversy, however, was caused by her staging of the ""Hair"", which was prepared in 1968 and premiered in 1969. A rock-musical, composed by Galt McDermot, with lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado, stirred not just the highest political and artistic circles, but also the common people. Heavily shook and agitated by the student protests of 1968, the Communist"