{"id":632398,"date":"2026-06-11T04:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T04:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/632398\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T04:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T04:13:08","slug":"radiohead-revenge-tragedy-hamlet-hail-to-the-thief-sets-london-dates-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/632398\/","title":{"rendered":"Radiohead revenge tragedy Hamlet Hail to the Thief sets London dates | Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hamlet Hail to the Thief<\/a>, an acclaimed stage production fusing Shakespeare\u2019s tragedy with Radiohead\u2019s sixth album, is to open at the Barbican theatre in London<\/a> this autumn.<\/p>\n

The show had its world premiere at Aviva Studios in Manchester last year and then ran at the Royal Shakespeare theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. It is a co-production between Factory International and the Royal Shakespeare Company and was co-created by Radiohead frontman, Thom Yorke<\/a>, and the directors Steven Hoggett and Christine Jones. Yorke reworked the 2003 album, which is performed live on stage by a cast of musicians and actors, the lyrics reinforcing themes of grief, despair and paranoia in the play.<\/p>\n

Samuel Blenkin will return in the role of Hamlet. In his four-star review<\/a>, the Guardian\u2019s Mark Fisher praised Blenkin\u2019s \u201cstartling\u201d performance as \u201ca voice of a generation exasperated by the failures of his superiors\u201d who has \u201cas much to rail against the world about as Yorke and his band did in the aftermath of September 11 and the ascendancy of George W Bush\u201d. The record\u2019s title was a spin on the US president\u2019s anthem (Hail to the Chief), which Yorke had heard in reference to Bush\u2019s disputed victory in Florida in the 2000 election.<\/p>\n

Thom Yorke at the Primavera Sound Festival in 2022. Photograph: Europa Press News\/Europa Press\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The show will run from 31 October to 23 January. Yorke said: \u201cI\u2019m finally bringing Hamlet Hail to the Thief to London, and to the Barbican<\/a> of all places! It is fascinating and very strange to me how this came to life and how it has worked. When it revealed itself to us over time I was shocked, having never had this kind of experience before. I am happy for it to be seen by a wider audience in such an intense space.\u201d Jones said: \u201cBoth the play and the album continue to speak urgently to the convulsed world we find ourselves in.\u201d Hoggett said that the Barbican is a place where \u201cthe boundaries [are] blown apart as to what theatre might be\u201d.<\/p>\n

Among the actors returning from the original production are Paul Hilton<\/a> as Claudius, Claudia Harrison as Gertrude and Ami Tredrea as Ophelia who, in this version, also asks the question \u201cto be or not to be\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the process of reworking Hail to the Thief for the stage production, Yorke listened to archive live recordings of its songs. \u201cI was shocked by the kind of energy behind the way we played<\/a>,\u201d he said. Newly mixed versions of those live recordings, from 2003 to 2009, were released as a surprise Radiohead album last summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hamlet Hail to the Thief, an acclaimed stage production fusing Shakespeare\u2019s tragedy with Radiohead\u2019s sixth album, is to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-632398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}