Let My People Come

[+ Avalon]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_My_People_Come

 

I had never heard of it until now. Mario Cantone mentioned in on the recent episode of "Match Game".

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Cantone

[leeper]

I saw the original production at the Village Gate a couple of times. I also saw the later Broadway version as well as a production in Philadelphia (which had "The Cunnilingus Champion of Company C" taken out due to a copyright issue with the folks responsible for "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy". The show was quite provocative at the time, but this was also around the era of "Oh Calcutta" and the movie "Deep Throat". Of course, I thoroughly enjoyed the show. The young man in the initial off-broadway run at Village gate who sang "I'm Gay" was beautiful. I recall as we left the show, some members of the cast came into the audience (naked) to thank us for coming. I also saw the 2013 remount which apparently had some level Earl Wilson Jr.'s involvement. It didn't have the nudity of the original and just kind of fell flat for me. What seemed exciting and provocative in 1974, no longer seemed either.

[+ WilliamM]

I saw "Oh Calcutta' in early Dec. 1969. Just ok. But, I had been in the Army until June 1969, so was quite used to nudity.

[bostonman]

It's also interesting that Hair, while it was clearly the best show of its genre at the time, is the one that tends to get remembered for its nudity, when it really didn't have much, especially compared to shows like Oh Calcutta and Let My People Come. The famous (or infamous?) "nude scene" was really nothing more than a quick reveal at the end of Act I, in the last section of the song "Where Do I Go." (And it was always optional for each cast member, from day one.)

 

I saw Hair in a 1990's national tour (having no idea that a colleague of mine was playing the "Margaret Mead" track - fun surprise), that included some joke-y voice-overs at the start of Act II, including a man saying something like "honey, we saw the nude scene - can't we go home now?"

 

(Hair did have a huge amount of sexual frankness, of course - but also a lot about drugs, racial tensions, and of course most importantly Vietnam, the draft, and the hippie world in general. But somehow it still gets remembered as being "the nude show" lol.)

 

I've heard the cast recording of Let My People Come. I'd say that its "appeals" are similar to the score of Naked Boys Singing, in the sense that these shows do tend to lose quite a bit without the visuals lol. Still, the "shock value" of the songs in Let My People Come must have been especially fun when it played in the 70's.

Edited September 10, 2018 by bostonman

[+ Avalon]

I remember in one episode of "Eight Is Enough" one of the daughters was in a Shakespeare play and they were going to perform it nude.