Thom Yorke sat in on Hamlet's rehearsals, says Christine Jones

Thom Yorke sat in on the rehearsals and technical rehearsals of Hamlet Hail to the Thief, Christine Jones has told Luke Reevey of The Standard. She co-created the show with Yorke and Steven Hoggett, and co-directs it with Hoggett. Yorke worked on the music with the show's arranger, Justin Levine, and its musical director, Tom Brady. Jones says Yorke would not allow a song to be dropped in whole, and kept experimenting, moving a piano part onto guitar or synth.

Jones cut Shakespeare's play over a Christmas in Covid quarantine, laying Radiohead's 2003 album Hail to the Thief against it in order from its first track, much as people pair The Wizard of Oz with Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. She calls it a spine line. “2 + 2 = 5” fitted the opening straight away, and the show still begins with it and ends on “A Wolf at the Door”. We often say that the play is haunted by the album and the album is haunted by the play.¹

Research for the set looked at prisons, since Hamlet calls Denmark one, and at NASA's Reverberant Acoustic Test Facility, built to test how sound affects people and spacecraft. Jones says Yorke started clapping on his first day in the Barbican theatre, thrilled by its acoustics.

Samuel Blenkin, who plays Hamlet, recalls arriving to sing and finding Yorke there, then singing one of Yorke's songs while Yorke played guitar. You don't forget those moments. You just bank them.¹

Songs and scenes as Jones matched them

Jones says the order and the songs' uses changed during the work. The show runs at the Barbican until 23 January 2027.

The Standard's film behind the creation of Hamlet Hail to the Thief· The London Standardwatch on youtube →