Radiohead reworks Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' for new stage production

Thom Yorke of the British band Radiohead performing during a summer 2018 North American tour image: Kamil Krzaczynski / AFP©

Shakespeare will meet Radiohead in a new stage production of "Hamlet" due to premiere next year, set to a reworked version of the band's "Hail to the Thief" album.

Alternative rockers Radiohead had a string of best-selling singles in the 1990s and early 2000s including "Creep", "Paranoid Android" and "No Surprises".

Frontman Thom Yorke's lyrics for the 2003 album were originally a response to the election of George W. Bush as US president and his "war on terror" that followed the September 11 attacks.

The singer-songwriter is deconstructing and reworking the album for the production, which will be performed by a cast of some 20 musicians and actors.

Yorke, who is working with Tony- and Olivier award-winning designer Christine Jones and director Steven Hoggett, said in a statement it was an "interesting and intimidating challenge".

"For years I've wanted to see the play and album collide in a piece of theatre; eventually I shared the idea with Thom, who was intrigued," said Jones, who conceptualised the idea.

She had been struck by the "uncanny reverberances between the (Hamlet) text and the album", she said.

"We've found that the play haunts the album, and the album haunts the play."

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Radiohead, comprising former school friends Yorke, brothers Jonny and Colin Greenwood, and Ed O'Brien and Philip Selway, formed in Oxfordshire, southern England, in 1985.

"Creep" was their 1992 debut single and remains their most successful, with over a billion views on YouTube.

By 2011, they had sold more than 30 million albums worldwide.

The band, which has also campaigned passionately for environmental causes, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019.

"Hamlet Hail To The Thief" will stage its world premiere in Manchester, northwestern England, in April 2025 before transferring to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon in June.