Thom Yorke's Hamlet Hail to the Thief set to premiere at the Barbican

The reimagining of the Shakespeare play was co-created by Yorke and directors Steven Hoggett and Christine Jones. It combines the tragedy with Radiohead's 2003 album, Hail to the Thief, and first received a sold-out world premiere at Aviva Studios' home of Factory International and the Royal Shakespeare Company last year. The play sees the album completely reworked by Yorke, performed live by a cast of musicians and actors.

“I’m into finally bringing Hamlet Hail to The Thief to London, and to the Barbican of all places!," Yorke says of the London premiere. "It is fascinating and very strange to me how this came to life and how it has worked. When it revealed itself to us over time I was shocked, having never had this kind of experience before. I am happy for it to be seen by a wider audience in such an intense space.”

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“Bringing this brutal play into the Barbican's brutalist space seems fated," Jones adds. "I feel fiercely fortunate to regroup with these incisive collaborators and push our work further. Both the play and the album continue to speak urgently to the convulsed world we find ourselves in. For me, working on this project is one way to find the ground beneath me.”

As Hoggett concludes, “The chance to put all the learnings into the next stages of a show is a great privilege. What were guesstimates and hopes become areas we can now push into, knowing we can create more precision. The fact that this is the process that will find its home on stage at the Barbican is truly thrilling. The show will become richer in its elision of music, movement and text which makes this space a perfect home. I myself have sat in the auditorium on many, many occasions and had the boundaries blown apart as to what theatre might be. We’re following some giants but also many of my personal inspirations. In this way we hope to continue this dazzling tradition - a commitment to theatre
that looks to meet the expectations of a multi-generational audience with an intention to be as radical as we are reverential.”