The combination of a Radiohead-infused Hamlet is proving irresistible, with tickets almost sold out for Stratford opening next week
THE combination of a Radiohead-infused Hamlet is proving irresistible as the forthcoming production of Hamlet Hail to the Thief is just about sold out.
Herald Arts can testify that it’s a production well worth seeing, having made the trip to see it in when it opened in Manchester last month… so grab one of the remaining tickets while you can before it arrives next week.
It comes to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre next week, running from 4th to 28th June.
A radical new take on Hamlet, it comes over as part rock show with the plot episodically told almost as a series of vignettes – as if filmed for an MTV showcase. There’s plenty of interpretive dance too, courtesy of co-director and choreographer Steven Hoggett.
The music has been overseen by Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, and uses the band’s 2003 album Hail to the Thief as the score.
Director Christine Jones had long had it in her mind that Hail to the Thief was suitable to tell Shakespeare’s great tragedy. And indeed, the angst-ridden lyrics, post-industrial experimentation and occasional wall of noise do perfectly conjure the tumultuous world of Elisnore and the troubled minds therein.
The blacked-out set consists of a backdrop of the front-on silhouette of a spooky old house, where musicains play in studio rooms on the ground floor, while two singers appear in separate upstairs windows. Also augmenting the action is all manner or lighting and video, with plenty of whizz-bang.
When I saw it at the Manchester Aviva Studios, along with my student daughter and her friends, the crowd was clearly stunned by the spectacle. The theatrical experience was perhaps new to many – and at some points audience members even whipped their phones out to capture it for prosperity and social media purposes, as if they were watching rock legends at work.
‘Frontman’ Samuel Blenkin excels as Hamlet – he looks the part of the put-upon indie kid in a sulky dither as he pits his wits and wrath against Claudius and his mum.
Paul Hilton as the usurping king is also impressive – a sort of Nick Cave type, with heaps of old school rock swagger.
Our other standout is Ami Tredrea as Ophelia. The production really shines a strobe on the possibility of the role. She becomes more integral to Hamlet’s story, and her madness and death is given extra dynanism and emotional depth thanks to an imaginative use of light, sound and movement.
The Ghost must also get a mentioned – a terrifying spectre of bowel-thundering noise and an agonised howling face projected against the haunted house-style backdrop.
While the young people I saw it with loved it, I suspect there will be a few harumphs from more conservative (small c!) quarters.
And to be fair it’s not a perfect production. The actors are – probably of necessity – miked up, which loses some of the subtlety and intimacy of the verse.
The other word that wrangled around my brain and wouldn’t go away was ‘contrived’.
‘Self-conscious navel-gazers’ is how rock magazine NME used to describe Oxford’s Radiohead back in the day – and this production does have the occasional heavy touch of contrivance (why do Gertrude and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do a strange morris-dance jig while chatting/plotting?!).
But all in all as Hamlet is arguably the first and foremost self-conscious navel-gazer of them all it all fits to perfection.
