Thom Yorke is to transform Radiohead’s album Hail to the Thief for a brand new stage manufacturing of Hamlet, opening subsequent spring in Manchester.
Yorke stated that the idea for the present introduced him with “an attention-grabbing and intimidating problem” to see how the music “collides with the motion and the textual content” of Shakespeare’s tragedy. He added that the endeavour would uncover how a lot of his band’s album, which options the tracks There There and Go to Sleep, “chimes with the underlying grief and paranoia” of the play.
Carried out by a forged of musicians and actors, Hamlet Hail to the Thief will run at Aviva Studios, Manchester, from 27 April to 18 Could. It’s going to then be staged on the Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 4-28 June.
Christine Jones, who will co-direct the manufacturing with Steven Hoggett, stated Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief tour “modified my DNA” and that lots of their songs “communicate to the themes of the play”. Her long-held dream of mixing the 2 works intrigued Yorke. “We’ve discovered that the play haunts the album, and the album haunts the play,” stated Jones.
Hail to the Thief, which was launched in the summertime of 2003, was not met with common reward. In a 3 star evaluation for the Guardian, critic Alexis Petridis wrote: “Hail to the Thief’s huge disadvantage has much less to do with its similarity to its predecessor than the sense that Radiohead’s famed gloominess is turning into self-parodic.” Nonetheless, in a reappraisal six years later, Pitchfork’s Joe Tangari urged: “Time and persistence have been sort to it … [it’s proof] that there might be life for a band after its landmark assertion, and that life sounds fairly rattling good.”
The report’s title was a spin on the anthem for the US president (Hail to the Chief), which Yorke had heard in reference to George W Bush’s disputed victory in Florida within the 2000 election. Jones stated that Shakespeare and Radiohead had been each reflecting on “the interior disquiet and rage that consequence from despair – specifically 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 the right way to discern proper from improper.”
It isn’t the primary time that the worlds of the Stratford-upon-Avon playwright and the Oxfordshire-formed band have mixed. In 2023, a live performance efficiency in Los Angeles referred to as Perchance to Dream introduced a cyberpunk tackle Hamlet utilizing Radiohead’s music. Yorke’s band, shaped in 1985, offered a track for Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 movie model of Romeo and Juliet starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. Exit Music (for a Movie) was used, because the title suggests, over its finish credit. The film additionally featured their track Speak Present Host.
Aviva Studios – residence to the organisation Manufacturing facility Worldwide – has introduced some eye-catching multidisciplinary productions in its £242m constructing on the location of the previous Granada tv studios. It was launched in October final 12 months with director Danny Boyle’s Free Your Thoughts, a dance model of The Matrix. In winter, Tremendous Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys offered the music for an adaptation of Oliver Jeffers’ Misplaced and Discovered.
John McGrath, creative director and chief government of Manufacturing facility Worldwide, stated: “Hamlet Hail to the Thief is precisely the sort of ingenious and impressive collaboration that Aviva Studios was constructed for – talking to the guts of our imaginative and prescient to be an area for artists to think about new prospects.”
Hoggett, who beforehand labored with Jones on Harry Potter and the Cursed Baby (he as motion director, she as set designer), urged that the manufacturing would make an arresting introduction for these unfamiliar with the Bard’s work. “Anybody seeing their first ever Shakespeare will discover a wide range of ‘methods in’ to take pleasure in and recognize what a spectacular play that is,” he stated.
Casting for Hamlet Hail to the Thief is but to be introduced. Tickets go on sale on 2 October.
