Radiohead is collaborating on a new stage production of Hamlet, set to premiere next spring in Manchester, England. The play, Hamlet Hail to the Thief, is being adapted and directed by Christine Jones and Steven Hoggett and will feature re-worked music from Radiohead’s 2003 LP, Hail to the Thief.
The production will debut at Aviva Studios in Manchester from April 27 through May 18, 2025 before transferring to Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford Upon Avon, where it will run from June 4-28, 2025.
A press release notes that in this “fast-paced distillation of the play, Shakespeare’s words and Radiohead’s album illuminate one another in thrilling new ways as the music becomes a critical part of the narrative. Personally reworked by Radiohead frontman Yorke, the deconstructed album will be performed live onstage by a cast of 20 musicians and actors.”
According to a synopsis, in the adaptation Hamlet’s home of Elsinore has become a surveillance state and hectic runs in the blood of its citizens. Hamlet Hail To The Thief will focus on Hamlet and Ophelia’s “awakening to the lies and corruption in Denmark, gradually revealed by ghosts and music. Paranoia reigns and no one is spared a tragic unraveling.”
Hail to the Thief, Radiohead’s follow-up to follow-up to sister albums Kid A and Amnesiac, celebrated its 20th anniversary last year. The 14-song LP is a notably weird album that Yorke once described as ideal “for shagging.” It also marked the band’s final album released on EMI.
“This is an interesting and intimidating challenge,” Yorke said in a statement. “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.”
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Jones noted, “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. There are uncanny reverberances between the text and the album. For years I’ve wanted to see the play and album collide in a piece of theatre; eventually I shared the idea with Thom, who was intrigued. I wasn’t sure what we would make, but I knew I wanted to make it with Steven and continue experimenting and building on work we have done together over many years.”
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“To communicate this expansive narrative, we have found it illuminating and inspiring to look to movement, text, lighting, sound, and music to achieve the complexities of the storytelling,” Hoggett added. “We hope that bringing such elements into play means that anyone seeing their first ever Shakespeare will find a variety of ‘ways in’ to enjoy and appreciate what a spectacular play this is.”
Tickets for both venues will go on sale Oct. 2 at 10 a.m. local time.
