LONDON, United Kingdom — 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 theater; eventually I shared the idea with Thom, who was intrigued,” said Jones, who conceptualized 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.”
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.
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