Radiohead let a play made from Thom Yorke's lyrics run, for charity

Radiohead will let The Untitled Radiohead Project, a play made entirely from Thom Yorke's lyrics, carry on at a small Los Angeles theatre, provided the proceeds go to charity. The band said so in a statement on Monday 23 November, and no injunction has been brought.

The play's lead is a young man called Thom, left in a coma by a car accident, and everything in the script is a Radiohead lyric. Its director, Dean Testerman, strings together lines from “Fake Plastic Trees”, “Creep”, “My Iron Lung” and others, and says the play is about the way we're getting technologically raped². It opened on 12 November at the Hollywood Court Theater, which has 70 seats. Testerman had not asked anyone's permission to use the words.

NME reported on 20 November that West Coast critics had liked it and that Testerman hoped one day to take it to Oxford. A Radiohead spokesman told the paper the band knew about the play but were not that bothered. Over the weekend several American websites reported that Testerman had had a phone call from Warner Chappell, Radiohead's music publishers, threatening an injunction.

The band knew nothing about the play until it had opened and reviews had started to come in.

Radiohead³

Nobody approached the band or Warner Chappell, and the statement says that upset them, since asking would at least have been courteous. Still, they do not want to force the show to close.