Last September, amid whispered rumours that Radiohead was going on tour, The Guardian reported that the band’s frontman, Thom Yorke, was developing a solo project: a reworking of the 2003 album Hail to the Thief into a stage adaptation of Hamlet. The play opened on Sunday at Aviva Studios in Manchester, where it will run until May 18, before moving to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon for performances from June 4 to June 28. Details about the production were kept somewhat under wraps, with a brief trailer, casting, and even runtime being revealed only a few months ahead of opening night.
The Hamlet that emerged was equal parts innovative and haunting. Boldly condensed from three hours to just under two, with no break in between, the resulting script is sharpened but never rushed, with a darkness that builds steadily to the end. Even without the addition of an alternative rock album, boldness is a must when dealing with an adaptation of a play as singularly momentous as Hamlet, which is something everyone involved in the production took to heart. For a Shakespearean debut, Samuel Blenkin makes a spectacular Hamlet—one reminiscent of Andrew Scott’s, just with a tad more edge and, of course, with the added elements of song and dance. Speaking of edgy additions, this Hamlet also contains a few f-bombs scattered throughout that add to the tension of the play without overdoing it.
But the boldest choice of the whole show was to have Ophelia (played by Ami Tredrea) repeat Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy just before her suicide. This scene and the one immediately before it form one of the strongest parts of the whole show. In that previous scene, Ophelia stands as a focal point for the rest of the characters while Gertrude desperately tries to reach her through the haze of grief-driven madness. This remake preserves every word of the original script but has Ophelia sing a heartbreaking rendition of Sail to the Moon. The image of Ophelia swaying on a platform while the other characters look on, completely lost as to how to help her, is an unforgettable one. Besides giving Ophelia some much-needed agency (sorry, William!), this also serves to solidify her and Hamlet as essentially soulmates. It is clear that the darkness he recognised in the world was visible to her too. The audience is placed within an interesting relationship with this darkness. From the very beginning, Hamlet Hail to the Thief stands out as an unabashed, artistic protest. The vision of Elsinore is that of a truth-repressing, watchful state, and with stadium-like seating around a small stage that’s visible at all angles, you very much feel like you are complicit in the watching. The simplicity of the stage setting adds to this, with black suits that hang ominously from the ceiling, and a crate on each of the two downstage corners that act as platforms.
Any goodness is present only in the short-lived relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia. Their first scene together is completely emptied of spoken words, and instead has the two dancing and singing the chorus to There, There. The repeating lyrics, “Just ’cause you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there,” along with the gothically strange and beautiful choreography, present an image of the young couple that’s just as effective as words. There is a force that is engulfing them in a chaos of constant doubt—a force that will soon break them apart.
The costumes for the show are uniformly black, simple and modern. One striking nuance, however, was to have the actors performing the ‘play-within-a-play’ sequence wear black bands around their eyes. Though there are eyeholes that allow them to see, the visual effect is of them wearing blindfolds—a powerful choice that reinforces a sense of wilful ignorance that makes up a lot of the conflict in the story. The choreography is the same as the costuming: modern, simple, and effective, not at all out of place when paired with Elizabethan language. The handful of background dancers occasionally present throughout several scenes (played by whichever secondary characters are not in the scene) act like puppets, controlled by the power that looms over Elsinore, of which Claudius is both an agent and seemingly possessed by. In one particular scene near the beginning, he and Gertrude dance with clownish grins on their faces, yet they move in a power-drunk jig, surrounded by dancers that imitate them, and one gets the sense they are not fully in control of their actions.
The force in question has already been made known to the audience. Right after the introductory sequence (the cast rushing the stage to 2+2=5, with Hamlet screaming the chorus at the audience through a red megaphone in mock-military fashion), is the first ghost scene. The ghost in question is far from your standard apparition—something one might have predicted given his absence from the cast list. In this production, the ghost is a heavily distorted, barely-human, glitching face projected on the rear wall of the stage, speaking with an equally fluctuating and unrecognisable voice. When Hamlet speaks to him, his body contorts in pain, almost as if he’s being possessed. This makes for a brilliant doubling element between him and Claudius and adds to the complexity of the play, both in its original form and in this modernised version.
Beyond the two leads, Paul Hilton and Brandon Grace give standout performances as Claudius and Laertes, with Hilton bringing the same menace he delivered as Iago in his acclaimed turn at the most recent National Theatre production of Othello, and Grace showing just the right progression from grief to murderous rage. Claudia Harrison and Tom Peters are also more than capable in their roles as Gertrude and Polonius, rounding out a well-assembled cast. Ramaya Weaver takes on three secondary roles—the Player Queen, Bernardo (reimagined here as Barnarda), and, of course, the Gravedigger. She brings distinctive energy to each, though the final role felt slightly pared down in the script. The scene was shortened, the second gravedigger removed, and only a handful of the original jokes retained. Even so, the trimming was sacrificially intentional, a trade-off that ultimately served the production’s sustained atmosphere of bleakness and intensity—so no complaints here. Hamlet’s consequent speech to Yorick felt just as immediate in thought and feeling as his “To be or not to be” soliloquy, both of which left the audience in tears and absolutely earned him a place in the Hamlet Hall of Fame.
This production’s biggest achievement, however, was the way it not only combined Shakespeare and Radiohead in a manner that felt so completely seamless and meant to be, but did so all while raising the themes of the original into such a relevant light. While this is by far not the first modern adaptation to align Hamlet’s situation to our own and use their similarities as protest, I would say it’s definitely the one that has done so most successfully. While the creative team as a whole is to be congratulated, the unique strengths of this production were ultimately all down to Christine Jones (who came up with the idea of combining the album and the play way back in 2004) and Thom Yorke as orchestrator. The darkness of Shakespeare’s text and the themes of systemic failure that haunt Hail to the Thief complete each other in a manner that is nothing short of revelatory. The darkness of the original script—the themes of corruption and injustice that form the background of Shakespeare’s text—are multiplied and serve to equally elevate the same themes in the album. In a period marked by political unreality, division, and chaos, I think it’s safe to say this Hamlet could not have come at a better time.
