Thom Yorke Adapts Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief for New Manufacturing of Hamlet

Radiohead’s pivotal, politically charged 2003 album, Hail to the Thief, will take a Shakespearean activate stage subsequent spring, when Thom Yorke adapts it for a brand new manufacturing of Hamlet. Titled Hamlet Hail to the Thief, the present will characteristic William Shakespeare’s textual content and the songs of Hail to the Thief, which have been reworked and orchestrated by Yorke for a forged of 20 musicians and actors.

Hamlet Hail to the Thief was tailored by director Steven Hoggett and Christine Jones, with preparations by Justin Levine. Per press supplies, the feverish piece will fuse motion, theater, and music into an all-new interpretation of the historic play. The brand new manufacturing depicts the Danish metropolis of Elsinore as a hellish surveillance state, the place paranoia a corruption plagues the reign of Prince Hamlet and Ophelia.

“That is an attention-grabbing and intimidating problem!” Yorke mentioned of the mission in press supplies. “Adapting the unique music of Hail to The Thief for stay efficiency with the actors on stage to inform this story that’s eternally being instructed, utilizing its familiarity and sounds, pulling them into and out of context, seeing what chimes with the underlying grief and paranoia of Hamlet, utilizing the music as a ‘presence’ within the room, watching the way it collides with the motion and the textual content. Ghosting one in opposition to the opposite.”

Jones added:

The primary Radiohead live performance I ever noticed was the Hail to the Thief tour in 2003. It modified my DNA. Not lengthy after, I used to be studying Hamlet and listening to the album. Being attentive to the lyrics, I turned conscious of what number of songs from Hail to the Thief communicate to the themes of the play. There are uncanny reverberances between the textual content and the album. For years I’ve wished to see the play and album collide in a bit of theatre; finally I shared the concept with Thom, who was intrigued. I wasn’t positive what we might make, however I knew I wished to make it with Steven and proceed experimenting and constructing on work we’ve carried out collectively over a few years.

We’ve discovered that the play haunts the album, and the album haunts the play. Each replicate the interior disquiet and rage that outcome from despair—particularly despair arising from scrutiny of dominant energy constructions—whether or not inside governments, communities, or households. The textual content and music probe us relentlessly to query what we’re product of, and methods to discern proper from flawed.