By Matthew Deakin
Romaya Weaver and James Cooney and the cast of Hamlet Hail to the Thief | PHOTO: Manuel Harlan
Factory International,
Manchester
It was T.S Eliot who famously decried Hamlet an ‘artistic failure’. For Eliot, Hamlet’s internal world was unknowable, and the play lacked elements and scenarios to externally represent Hamlet’s emotions to evoke emotion in the audience. Arguably, through the addition of music, Christine Jones and team have found a remedy to this.
Enter Radiohead’s 2003 studio album Hail to the Thief, its lyrics steeped in the political rhetoric of the 2000 presidential election and its music, moody and charged with well-wrought energy and sonic complexity.
Often presented as the image of teenage angst, in his ‘suits of solemn black’, with (in this production) an appetite for Camus, Hamlet makes for a perfect Radiohead fan.
The play is dramatically abridged, from four to just shy of two hours with the album similarly deconstructed, re-structured and re-orchestrated.
This remoulding and amalgamation brings forth the ‘uncanny similarities’ between the two disparate works, namely the fact that they both speak to respective contemporary anxieties of governmental change and distrust, but also handle existential questions like what it means to be human. The interplay of music and drama is also vividly reflected in the show’s staging: the central placement of the band and an array of guitar amplifiers anchors the action, serving as a focal point amid the stark, concrete setting of this bleak Elsinore, around which the cast performs a series of carefully choreographed scenes.
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Despite the play’s ambiguous era and Yorke’s aversion to politicising his work, Hamlet Hail to the Thief is undoubtedly a political statement for the modern era. Through clever line omissions, those in positions of power -Claudius, Polonius and even the ghost (here a revenge demanding demon) – are presented as exaggeratedly corrupt, always watching, listening and hiding in shadows. In Samuel Blenkin’s often tormented performance as the eponymous prince, Hamlet’s madness is less an ‘antic disposition’ and more the symptom of the insanity to which he has been driven by the corrupted and rotting state of Denmark. This rub between individual and state is highlighted by the polyrhythms and irregular time signatures in tracks like ‘Myxomatosis’ and ‘2+2=5’.
Ami Tredrea’s fierce Ophelia was a standout: empowered, confident, and unafraid to stand up for herself, smacking Hamlet after he commands her to a nunnery. In a departure from the original plot, she sings a lamentful version of Sail to the Moon after also being driven to insanity by the corrupt royal court. Before her death by drowning, she echoes Hamlet’s famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy, a creative choice that positions her as Hamlet’s equal in exploring profound questions of existence. The significance of this moment is reinforced by the fact that Ophelia, like Hamlet, expresses herself through song, setting them apart from other characters and emphasizing their introspective natures.
I was skeptical, worried that I’d rather either watch Hamlet, or listen to Hail to the Thief. But Hamlet Hail to the Thief felt like an organic amalgamation of two complimentary works, unlike any Shakespeare I’ve ever seen. High production values, fantastic acting and choreography as well as interesting and thoughtful musical arrangements made for an enthralling experience.
‘Hamlet Hail to the Thief’ is a co-production between the Royal Shakespeare Company and Factory International, running at Aviva Studios Home of Factory International, Manchester until 18 May before transferring to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford Upon Avon from 4 June – 28 June.