One of the biggest hits of the recent Broadway season was the critically acclaimed revival of Take Me Out, starring in-the-buff Jesse Williams and a cast of heavy hitters baring all for eager audiences — so eager that one audience member leaked a video.
Richard Greenberg’s Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning play is part of a lineage of theatrical works that have called upon actors to drop their drawers for art’s sake. Here are five more stage productions with full-frontal male nudity that are sure to raise more than eyebrows.
The Inheritance
Matthew López’s epic exploration of the AIDS crisis was a hit in London, but the Broadway production lasted only 132 performances. It still managed to win four 2020 Tony Awards in a COVID-lean season, including Best Play. Those who endured the two-part, seven-hour opus — if not dozing off — were treated to Samuel H. Levine as the spiraling trust-fund kid who drops drawers only to be told to put his underwear back and hit with this zinger:
“Gay men shouldn’t shop at Costco until they’re at least forty and own land. What if you’d hooked up tonight? You really want a guy seeing you in that Fruit-of-the- Loom banality you’re wearing right now?”
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The Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles presents the west coast premiere this fall from September 13 through November 27.
Related: 5 stage shows that had audiences gagging over full-frontal male nudity
Oh! Calcutta!
One of New York City’s longest-running shows, Oh! Calcutta! lasted more than three years during its initial run, which began in 1969, then returned in 1976 for another 5,959 performances. Audiences couldn’t get enough of the erotic revue, originally conceived by English theater critic Kenneth Tynan and directed in New York by Jacques Levy, who would go on to collaborate with Bob Dylan.
The show included contributions by Jules Feiffer, John Lennon, and Sam Shepard, among others, and an unconventional rehearsal process, according to cast member and choreographer Margo Sappington. “On a daily basis, we would do these sensitivity exercises,” Sappington told the New York Times. “One day Jacques said, ‘Throw your robes off,’ and everybody threw their robes off and screamed and laughed and jumped around until we fell into an exhausted heap.”
Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune
It’s been 20 years since Terrence McNally’s two-hander first appeared on Broadway starring Edie Falco and Stanley Tucci as a middle-aged couple that hook up on their first date. “Both stars open the show in their birthday suits, but once the audience recovers from the initial shock, the contours of their naked bodies become more integral to their characters than all of the props on John Lee Beatty’s cluttered set,” wrote Rex Reed of the 2002 production.
While the opening scene famously begins with both naked, the characters’ emotional vulnerability has attracted A-listers since the play initially premiered Off-Broadway starring F. Murray Abraham and Kathy Bates. A 2019 revival co-starred Audra McDonald and Michael Shannon.
Love! Valour! Compassion!
Terrence McNally, once again, stripped his characters of artifice and clothes in this 1994 gay ensemble dramedy, which started Off-Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club and then later transferred for a brief commercial run with most of the cast intact, including Nathan Lane and a Tony-winning performance by John Glover.
A gathering of friends and lovers at a summer lake house north of New York City set the stage for a skinny-dipping exit at the play’s end, though Randy Becker, in his only Broadway credit to date, drew plenty of attention for his au natural performance through most of the second act. Alison Rose for The New Yorker wrote a humor piece depicting how audience members from different parts of the city might react. “Gay Man, Chelsea: It is huge. Absolutely. And I’ve seen quite a few.”
Afterglow
Premiering in 2017, long before COVID and monkeypox were a thing, married couple Josh and Alex invite Darius to share their bed. The physical and emotional connections are thrupple the fun and fervor in S. Asher Gelman’s dramatic one-act play that was a hit Off-Broadway and in London before making its west coast premiere. The play begins with a simultaneous three-way orgasm, and plenty of full-frontal nudity normalizes the action for those used to parading around their apartments au naturel.
The play also offers commentary on the early expiration date of viability in gay culture. Elisabeth Vincentelli wrote in the New York Times, “The best joke of all, intended or not, may be the sly jab at the cult of youth among some gay men: Josh is having a midlife crisis — at the ripe age of 30.” The Los Angeles production was extended and runs through August 28.
JJinAus
I am extremely pro-penis. I have seen shows with full male nudity and it’s distracting.
Kangol2
I’m glad you mentioned Afterglow. One thing I thought after seeing Take Me Out in its new incarnation was that it would be great if there were a TV channel–it would probably have to be streaming instead of cable–that ran videos of plays and musicals to make them accessible to everyone. PBS features some plays and operas, as did Ovation in its heyday, and some public radio stations do as well. I say this because I imagine a majority of people, especially younger people, who might be interested in seeing these plays aren’t going to be able to see most of the ones on Broadway, Off Broadway, Off Broadway and great other local (NYC, LA, SF, Chicago, etc.) plays, even when the productions travel.
So film them and then present them on a dedicated subscription channel, unless there’s a way to get this channel on cable TV. This would encourage more filming of plays and musicals, and the agreement could be that they would not air if they are going up on main stages anywhere.
willward
Don’t forget the “Angels in America” revival in 2018 which featured a totally nude Lee Pace.
ARTmark
You forgot BENT