This is not a needle drop extravaganza, a full album playback, or a Radiohead musical. It is very much a production of Hamlet. Sometimes the music becomes a fog intermingling with the dry smoke that encircles the characters on stage. It’s a haunting presence, with snippets of Yorke’s vocals often used to sound like distant wolf calls. It’s in keeping with the apparitions we see of Hamlet’s murdered father, the late king of Denmark.
These ominous drones are often peppered with the familiar; the percussive taps of “Where I End and You Begin” playing out like a palpitating heartbeat or the malevolent electronic pulse of “Myxomatosis” purring in the background. Yorke has described it as deconstructing the album, akin to taking shattered pieces of glass and gluing them back together. But there’s also some sizable shards still neatly intact. While there’s never a full outing of a song for its entire duration, numerous tracks get big walloping full band renditions—“2+2=5,” “Go To Sleep,” and “There, There” are thunderous—and many are repeated throughout as recurring motifs.
As it evolves, you get the sense that vibe, mood, and certain words and phrases have been stronger signifiers for artistic direction than a textual analysis of the songs. The creators said that when they experimented with aligning more concrete narrative themes, such as using “Myxomatosis” to explore Ophelia’s madness, it rang hollow, and they started over. Instead, what you have are spliced-in moments that speak to the unfolding drama without getting in the way. What could feel jarring is instead fluid.
So after Hamlet first sees the vision of his murdered father and the booming “There, There” comes to life, the lyrical refrain of, “Just ’cause you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there” is a perfect mood setter. Similarly, when Hamlet begins his campaign to avenge his father’s death, the crashing “Go to Sleep” rings out with the warning of, “Something big is gonna happen.” In the wrong hands, this could be too didactic and clumsy, but it’s deftly executed, and the integration of songs, drama, and dance is seamless—and often stunning. An example of the latter comes when Ophelia sings “Sail to the Moon” leading up to her suicide. The slow, mournful piano chords capture the somber bite of the scene with remarkable punch yet also a sobering stillness, and that’s before the elegiac words carry the song off into the sky.
This project really doesn’t have any right to work, or make quite as much sense as it does. But it is an absorbing, heart-racing, and thrilling production that gracefully utilizes this music to co-exist within powerful dramatic depictions of grief, fear, madness, and death. And if Yorke feels like Hail to the Thief was a record trapped by its surface-level political associations and one that slipped through his grasp all those years ago, he seems in powerful command of it once again here.
Hamlet Hail to the Thief is a co-production between the Royal Shakespeare Company and Factory International, running at Aviva Studios Home of Factory International, Manchester until 18 May before transferring to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon from June 4 – June 28.
