Radiohead Collaborate With Royal Shakespeare Company for Hamlet Hail To The Thief - Noise11.com
Thom Yorke, Radiohead, Photo: Ros O'Gorman

Thom Yorke, Radiohead, Photo: Ros O'Gorman

Radiohead Collaborate With Royal Shakespeare Company for Hamlet Hail To The Thief

by Paul Cashmere on February 27, 2025

in News

The Royal Shakespeare Company have announced their cast for the Thom Yorke/Radiohead collaboration ‘Hamlet Hail To The Thief’ production for the UK.

Samuel Blenkin (Alien, Mickey 17) is taking on the title role. Claudia Harrison (The Crown) will play Gertrude opposite Paul Hilton (Slow Horses, An Enemy of the People) as Claudius and the Ghost.

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke has reworked and orchestrated the tracks from the 2003 Radiohead album ‘Hail To The Thief’. The production will feature 20 actors and musicians performing the reworked album along with the Shakespeare script.

‘Hail To The Thief’ was the sixth Radiohead album following ‘Amnesiac’ in 2001. The original album was recorded over a two week period with Nigel Godrich in Los Angeles’ Ocean Way studio and completed at Radiohead’s studio in Oxfordshire.

Yorke’s context for the album came from America’s “general sense of ignorance and intolerance and panic and stupidity” following the 2000 election of George W. Bush. The title was a reference to the American presidential anthem ‘Hail To The Chief’.

‘Hail To The Thief’ reached no 1 in the UK, no 2 in Australia and no 3 in the USA. It sold over 3 million worldwide.

Radiohead’s ‘Hamlet Hail To The Thief’ will be presented in Manchester at Factory International (April 27-May 18) and in Stratford-upon-Avon at The Royal Shakespeare Company (June 4-28).

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