1. Madhouse on Castle Street, Chopper. While, to my knowledge, no specific song on the album builds upon these references, the Connecticut-based power pop band Chopper’s 1995 album Madhouse on Castle Street not only uses the name of a play as the album’s title but has a photograph of a playwright’s home on its back cover. Madhouse on Castle Street was a TV drama written by Evan Jones, directed by Philip Saville and broadcast by the BBC in 1963. It featured Bob Dylan singing and acting, back when his folksinger fame was largely a New York City cult thing.
The photo on the back of the Chopper CD (an image also emblazoned on the disc itself) is of the High Street, London apartment of Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell—the flat where both men died in a murder-suicide.
2. The Odd Couple, Gnarls Barkley. Neil Simon’s fourth play, Gnarls Barkley’s second album.
3. Long Day’s Journey Into the Night, Bolland & Bolland. You might know Bolland as Bolland & Bolland, the Dutch pop producers behind Falco’s “Rock Me Amadeus.” “Long Day’s Journey” is a track from their 1981 album The Domino Theory, which also features “You’re in the Army Now” (a hit for the Status Quo)… and an overture.
4. Skin of Our Teeth, Hunters & Collectors. The song by the 1980s Australian pop band has nothing directly to do with Thornton Wilder’s 1942 play, except for the central themes of survival and (to quote the H&C lyrics) “God-fearing good living” and “scrabbling under the bed.”
5. They Might Be Giants—it’s a play (by James Goldman of The Lion in Winter and Follies fame), the movie based on that play (starring Joanne Woodward and George C. Scott), the rock band arbitrarily named after that movie (sometimes known as the two Johns and their band of Dans) and that band’s debut album (aka The Pink Album). That’s one resilient title.