Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, and celebrated directors, Steven Hoggett and Christine Jones join forces for a frenetic adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet haunted by Radiohead’s celebrated 2003 album Hail to the Thief.

Olivier award-winner Steven Hoggett is a founder member of Frantic Assembly whose credits as a choreographer include The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and Black Watch. Tony and Olivier Award winner Christine Jones is Creator and Artistic Director of Theater For One, and director of New York immersive nightclub experience, Queen of the Night. Their projects together as choreographer and designer include Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, American Idiot and Let the Right One In.

Thom Yorke said: “This is an interesting and intimidating challenge! Adapting the original music of Hail to The Thief for live performance with the actors on stage to tell this story that is forever being told, using its familiarity and sounds, pulling them into and out of context, seeing what chimes with the underlying grief and paranoia of Hamlet, using the music as a ‘presence’ in the room, watching how it collides with the action and the text. Ghosting one against the other.”

In this fast-paced distillation of the play, Shakespeare’s words and Radiohead’s album illuminate one another in thrilling new ways as the music becomes a critical part of the narrative.  Personally reworked by Yorke, the deconstructed album will be performed live onstage by a cast of 20 musicians and actors.

Elsinore has become a surveillance state and hectic runs in the blood of its citizens. Hamlet Hail to the Thief centres on Hamlet and Ophelia’s awakening to the lies and corruption in Denmark, gradually revealed by ghosts and music. Paranoia reigns and no one is spared a tragic unravelling.

Hail to the Thief (2003) is Radiohead’s sixth studio album with singles including ‘There There’, ‘2+2=5’ and ‘Go to Sleep’. Recorded in the wake of the September 11 attacks and the subsequent ‘War On Terror’, the album underscores a period of paranoia, fear and anxiety, using a striking mix of rock, unsettling sound experiments and lullaby piano ballad, with dystopian themes incorporating Orwell inspired lyrics and theatrical, Brothers Grimm style fables.

Bringing together the innovation of Factory International and the Royal Shakespeare Company, Hamlet Hail to the Thief is equally at home in a vast music warehouse space and on an iconic theatre stage. Casting is to be announced in due course.

Hamlet Hail to the Thief shows at Royal Shakespeare Theatre from Wednesday 4 -  Saturday 28 June 2025. Tickets available at rsc.org.uk