Rockabye Hamlet is a musical adapted from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. It lasted for seven performances on Broadway in 1976. I saw one of them. Tickets were cheap, the attendance was sparse, and we moved up near the front. It was a lavish production directed by Gower Champion who had directed Hello Dolly among other shows. Meat Loaf was one of the cast members.
Making a musical of Hamlet is a terrible idea. All of the main characters die. This doesn’t happen in musicals which are usually upbeat. There had been successful Shakespeare musicals in the 1970s but they were based on the comedies, not the tragedies. This was like something out of The Producers.
Rockabye Hamlet (Broadway, Minskoff Theatre, 1976) | Playbill
Sad! 