Hamlet Hail to the Thief at Aviva Studios

Hamlet Hail to the Thief brings Shakespeare’s great tragedy and Radiohead’s seminal album together in an intoxicating blend of theatre, music, and movement.

In this frenetic adaptation of Shakespeare’s masterpiece, Elsinore has become a surveillance state and paranoia reigns in the blood of its citizens. With a focus on Hamlet and Ophelia’s awakening to the corruption around them, music plays an integral part in the narrative.

For Hamlet Hail to the Thief, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has reworked the band’s critically acclaimed record, which will be performed live on stage by a cast of musicians and actors, drawing out the many connections between the record and the play.

Released in the summer of 2003, Hail to the Thief is an album of fever pitch drama, unrelenting in its musical foreboding and explosive in its lyrical rage at power structures and political corruption. Like Shakespeare’s text, paranoia reigns and no one is spared a tragic unravelling.

Way back when the record was released, the parallels between Hail to the Thief and Hamlet weren’t lost on co-director Christine Jones:

“The first Radiohead concert I ever saw was the Hail to the Thief tour in 2003. It changed my DNA. Not long after, I was reading Hamlet and listening to the album. Paying attention to the lyrics, I became aware of how many songs from Hail to the Thief speak to the themes of the play. Both reflect the internal disquiet and rage that result from despair – in particular despair arising from scrutiny of dominant power structures – whether within governments, communities, or families.”

Years later, when Jones pitched the idea to Yorke, he was intrigued by her idea that “the play haunts the album, and the album haunts the play”.

“This is an interesting and intimidating challenge!” Yorke said of the project in recent press materials. “Adapting the original music of Hail to the Thief for live performance with the actors on stage to tell this story that is forever being told, using its familiarity and sounds, pulling them into and out of context, seeing what chimes with the underlying grief and paranoia of Hamlet, using the music as a ‘presence’ in the room, watching how it collides with the action and the text. Ghosting one against the other.”

With recent cast announcements, the show boasts some outstanding names from theatre and screen: Samuel Blenkin (Black Mirror, Netflix; Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, West End) steps into the title role of Hamlet alongside Ami Tredrea (The Crucible, National Theatre) as Ophelia. The exceptional cast of 13 also includes Paul Hilton (Slow Horses, Apple TV+; Juno & The Paycock, Gielgud Theatre) as Claudius/Ghost, Annabel Baldwin (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, West End) as Horatio, James Cooney (Andor, Disney+) as Rosencrantz and Claudia Harrison (The Crown, Netflix) as Gertrude.

Co-created by Yorke and celebrated directors, Frantic Assembly’s Steven Hoggett and Theater for One’s Christine Jones, Hamlet Hail to the Thief will distil Shakespeare’s great tragedy to its dark and heated core. Don’t miss its world premiere at Aviva Studios, home of Factory International, this spring.