60's Psychedelia

But hey! ho! it’s the psychedelic 60s, and surrealism moves merrily mainstream through ‘The Beatles’ dreamscape and absurdist, illogical lyrics: the ‘tangerine trees and marmalade skies’ of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and ‘Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall’ from A Day in the Life on the 1966 Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album play to a global audience.

A decade of flower-powered psychedelic freedom sees the rebirth of dada in the antics of the Yippies, 56 and, by the 70s, subverts the despair of Absurdist theatre with a strand of subtextual optimism in the post-absurdist genre generated by Tom Stoppard. 57