Making Radiohead talk to each other Hail to the Thief (album released in 2003) with one of the most famous theatrical works of all time: Hamlet Shakespeare. This is the aim of Thom Yorke, who is working on, so to speak, a theatrical adaptation of the songs contained in the Radiohead album.
The result will be called Hamlet Hail to the Thief and will be performed for the first time from 27 April to 18 May in Manchester. The tour will then continue to Stratford-upon-Avon, the Bard's supposed birthplace, where it will be performed at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre from 4 to 28 June.
“It’s an interesting and slightly scary challenge,” says Yorke. In particular, he’s curious to see how the music “could collide with the action and the lyrics” of Shakespeare’s tragedy. The production will also provide a chance to see how the album “converses with the undertones of pain and paranoia” of the play.
Christine Jones, who will co-direct the show with Steven Hoggett, said that, at the time, Radiohead's tour linked to Hail to the Thief had “modified my DNA,” and that he believes many of the songs “have a connection to themes of tragedy.” Combining Radiohead and Shakespeare was a dream of his: “We found that the opera haunts the album, so to speak, and the album haunts the opera.”
The connections would seem to begin with the album's title, designed to distort the military march of the American President Hail to the Chief (from “honor to the boss” to “honor to the thief”) on the occasion of George W. Bush's controversial victory in the 2000 elections. Both Shakespeare and Radiohead speak of power structures and their distortions and consequences. “The lyrics and the music make us constantly ask ourselves what we are made of, and how we can distinguish right from wrong.”
This is not the first time that these two worlds have met. In 2023, Los Angeles staged Perchance to Dreama performance that presented a cyberpunk reinterpretation of Hamlet through the music of Radiohead. In 1996, the band had given two songs to Baz Luhrmann for the soundtrack of Romeo + Juliet that is to say Talk Show Host and on the titles of what Exit Music (For a Film).
