When asked about my favorite plays I tend to mention Hamlet and HAIR in the same sentence. Bonus points if you already knew that there’s loads of Shakespeare references in HAIR anyway :).
So you just know that I’m going to post this link about a musical version of “Two Gentlemen of Verona” written by John Guare (“The House of Blue Leaves) and Galt McDermott (“HAIR”). It was actually written back in 1971 and it’s come back to New York.
Here’s trivia. The most obvious Shakespeare reference in HAIR is the whole “What a piece of work is man” song, which is lifted verbatim from Hamlet. Ok, not verbatim, since it starts out with “I have of late…” which is technically in the middle of the speech. Additionally, just before “Let the Sunshine In” the chorus is singing “The rest is silence….the rest is silence…..” over and over again, also from Hamlet.
There’s a really good third reference as well, and it’s not from Hamlet. Who knows it?