Last Updated on November 15, 2026
Love, death, iambic pentameter and Radiohead intersect to create an electrifying Shakespearean rock opera production of Hamlet
4.5 out of 5.0 starsIf you went to school in an English-speaking country in the latter half of the last century you are likely to carry various degrees of trauma from being made to study the works of William Shakespeare. Whether it was sonnets about a summer’s day, or plays written in impenetrable archaic English (forsooth! prithee!), I just remember wondering how any of this was relevant to me or the world I inhabited, so far removed it seemed from “real life”. It took the gradual emergence of productions like Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet or Ralph Fiennes’s Coriolanus which used the original text transposed to a modern setting to illustrate and reinforce the timelessness of Shakespeare’s themes, characters and the beauty of his language. Set against this continuum, Shakespeare’s Hamlet set to Radiohead’s Grammy-winning Hail to the Thief album seems less sacrilegious than it might at first glance appear.
The kernel of the concept for the current Royal Shakespeare Company & Factory International production of Hamlet Hail to the Thief had been germinating in Christine Jones’s mind since she heard Radiohead’s sixth studio album Hail to the Thief performed in 2003. Recorded in the wake of the September 11 attacks and the so-called “war on terror”, the album reflects on a period of paranoia, fear and anxiety permeated by dystopian themes. Although the show’s co-creator and orchestrator Thom Yorke of Radiohead had not been intentionally influenced by Hamlet when writing the songs on the album, there are striking parallels between them. Both examine the ideas of corrupt political power and illegitimate rulers; surveillance and paranoia; moral ambiguity; and the psychological disintegration brought on by grief. Jones could not put down the idea that the play and the music could enter into an illuminating dialogue with each other, ultimately offering dramatic symbiosis.
As a first step, Jones took Shakespeare’s 4 hour epic and ruthlessly edited the text down to about 90 minutes. Cutting out much of the political intrigue and trimming down the role of peripheral characters, the tight script focuses on the central story of Hamlet, Claudius, Ophelia and the Ghost. When Jones approached Thom Yorke with the idea he was immediately intrigued by the parallel themes and the potential for symbiosis but both knew that playing songs from the album in full (or even in the album’s original sequence) during the production would not work. Yorke cherry-picked the songs that succeeded particularly well in echoing and underscoring the play’s themes and the characters’ inner turmoil, breaking them into fragments and reworking them into a theatrical score. The resulting soundtrack, although including snippets and reworkings recognisable to Radiohead fans, is very much a score for a play rather than turning Shakespeare into a jukebox musical.
To create a vocabulary to bridge gaps or accelerate the narrative created by the edited text, Jones collaborated with co-creator/co-director Steven Hoggett who co-founded the acclaimed physical theatre company Frantic Assembly. Hoggett was tasked with unpicking how the album and its lyrics suggested interaction with the text and creating a physical language to express the underlying emotions of the show. Much of the production’s resulting air of oppression and agitation comes from his fantastic physical choreography. This extends beyond traditional dance sequences to characters sometimes moving in very specific and stylised ways while delivering lines of dialogue, reinforcing their true intentions even while their words try to hide them.
Much of the visual impact of the production comes from a fantastic set and lighting. The monumental set (by AMP featuring Sadra Tehrani) sits somewhere between a rock concert stage, a recording studio and an interrogation room. It provides an ominous, monochrome backdrop to all the action while its elevated platform provides a perfect place for eavesdropping and surveillance. Characters and vocalists appear in its windows, and its base cleverly brings the band on stage in what look like glass-fronted sound booths. Specific spaces are often delineated by illuminated squares of varying sizes drawn on the floor; and Ophelia’s drowning is a highlight.
The static set is brought to life by outstanding use of smoke, projections (designed by Jessica Hung Han Yun) and lighting (designed by Lisa Duncan). The projected shape-shifting Ghost is a truly unsettling vision of a man poisoned, bringing to mind Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian opposition leader disfigured by a failed attempt to poison him in 2004. Spotlighting together with smoke create wonderfully dramatic scenes, like Claudius’s first appearance; and the banks of rock-concert lights that shine blindingly into the audience at intervals call to mind an interrogation room,
The result of all these elements taken together is a brilliant fast-paced, sometimes frenetic and unsettling journey. Hamlet (Samuel Blenkin) returns from university to find his father the king of Denmark dead, poisoned by his own brother Claudius (Paul Hilton) – both outstanding, mesmerising performances – and his mother Gertrude (Claudia Harrison married to Claudius within weeks. His father’s ghost reveals the treachery to him and his friend Horatio (Alby Baldwin) and the stage is set for Hamlet’s struggle with paranoia and his own moral compass in the face of a corrupt state, oppressive surveillance and plotting from within. Hamlet and his young lover Ophelia (Ami Tredrea), daughter of Claudius’s adviser Polonius (Nicolas Tennant) cling to one another emotionally as the extent of the corruption in their government reveals itself but even their relationship falls prey to the machinations of others.
I don’t think it is really a spoiler to say that “everyone dies”, but as we hurtle towards that conclusion, there is much to like about this impressive production. Blenkin is excellent as Hamlet, alternating believably between emo-kid despair, real emotional pain and vengeful rage. The contrast and his ability to switch effortlessly between extremes heightens the intensity of both, and his naturalistic delivery of many famous lines breathes new life into words one has heard a thousand times. Paul Hilton as Claudius and the Ghost is also fantastic, brining gravitas while inspiring almost reptilian revulsion in his lascivious interactions with Gertrude. Ophelia’s character is less of a passive victim of circumstance here and Tredrea gives a great performance as she descends into psychological disintegration, grief and death.
Hoggett’s choreography is superb, both in the expansive sequences when the entire company dances together, as well as in more tender and playful moments where Hamlet and Ophelia dance together or Claudius and Gertrude’s sexually charged pas de deux. The movements do an excellent job of evoking the mood and emotions that might otherwise have been lost in the edited dialogue. There is jittery paranoia, wanton debauchery and a wonderful sequence with Hamlet and his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern where they repeatedly lean impossibly, to the point of falling, before catching themselves. This beautifully enhances the sense of uncertainty and instability that runs through the entire piece. It is also interesting that none of the actors are trained dancers, but they rise brilliantly to the challenge of this intensely physical production.
As with the choreography, the music complements and amplifies the themes and the mood throughout the show, adding a rich new dimension. This is no mean feat – one only has to look at this year’s ill-fated Trainspotting musical to know that not all musical overlays of much-loved narratives will work. But it is interesting to note that Shakespeare himself often engaged with musicians to produce musical additions to his plays, not as an optional add-on but as integral parts of the play. Thom Yorke does an excellent job of integrating the music in a way that is in a dialogue rathe than a barroom brawl with narrative. Radiohead fans will definitely recognise key fragments or melodies from the Radiohead album Hail to the Thief, but not being familiar with the album is no bar to appreciating and enjoying the interplay between music and dialogue. I particularly loved the use of 2 + 2 = 5 as the opening track, its mathematically nonsensical title referencing the post-truth society and state manipulation of information; the building intensity of Go to Sleep; and the haunting refrain of There, There (including the apposite line “just ’cause you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there”). Although the cast themselves also sing, there are two dedicated vocalists who appear at upper windows in the set at intervals to sing, and their harmonies were outstanding. I loved that the band was on stage throughout, visible but imprisoned in their glass sound booths; and their musicianship was flawless. Alongside the Radiohead songs there are also bursts of electronic noise and feedback which accentuate the unsettled and anarchic atmosphere of the play. The sound design by Gareth Fry is excellent and it is powerful, visceral stuff.
This dynamic, sometimes frenetic, sometimes oppressive but always gripping production brilliantly foregrounds all the key themes in Shakespeare’s work, never sacrificing cohesion or complexity for the sake of brevity. Given the current state of the world, a play and music addressing morally bankrupt rulers, political corruption, mass paranoia and the search for moral truth seems particularly timely. Excellent performances all round, an imposing and clever set, and fact that both the music and movement integrate seamlessly into the narrative rather than being shoehorned in, makes this an unmissable production.
Hamlet Hail To The Thief is on from 31 October 2026 to 23 January 2027 and tickets starting from £34 are available here. The running time is 1h40m and there is no interval.
Hamlet Hail To The Thief
Barbican Centre
Silk Street
London
EC2Y 8DS
Tel.: 020 7638 4141
E-mail: info@barbican.org.uk
Want to see more Shakespeare? Check out or review of Love’s Labours Lost.
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