Hamlet actor Samuel Blenkin on raising a music problem with Thom Yorke

Samuel Blenkin, who plays Hamlet in Hamlet Hail to the Thief, has told The Standard about the first time the company tried “To be or not to be”. Music was pulsing beneath the speech, and he felt the two were in conflict in a way that did not help. He had to find his nerve before raising it with Thom Yorke, who orchestrated the show's Hail to the Thief songs.

Yorke then spent about 10 minutes with the show's band, keeping what he planned to himself. When the speech started again, the music shifted halfway through, and Blenkin says that thrilled him.

Blenkin also describes huge self-doubt over the famous Hamlets before him, and says talk in rehearsal of removing the curse of history made the part more playful. In a separate interview, with Matt Wolf of Broadway.com, Blenkin says Yorke's work is given as much voice as the play, and finds the excitement in two works of art rubbing against each other.

Blenkin's nerve to offer Yorke suggestions, The Standard says, came from working on Atlanta, the Donald Glover series, where the strongest idea carried the day. Of Yorke, he says he is extremely collaborative¹.