'Hamlet Hail to the Thief' co-director Steven Hoggett on fusing Shakespeare and Radiohead

As the Barbican becomes home to a brand-new take on Hamlet, the show's co-director Steven Hoggett discusses why Radiohead makes a perfect pairing with Shakespeare.

Summary

• Hamlet Hail to the Thief blends Shakespeare's great tragedy with the Radiohead album, Hail to the Thief
• Steven Hoggett co-drects and adapts with Christine Jones
• The show premiered in Manchester last year, before transferring to Stratford upon Avon’s Royal Shakespeare Theatre

It's unusual for any Shakespeare production not to come with a “concept” these days, but there are few buzzier than Hamlet Hail to the Thief, a fusion between Shakespeare’s Danish tragedy and the British rock band Radiohead’s seminal 2003 album Hail to the Thief.

Shakespeare’s play is about a young man asking existential questions about life, death, and morality and Radiohead’s album was created in response to 9/11 and the "War on Terror” instigated by George W. Bush’s presidency (its title is a pun on the presidential anthem “Hail to the Chief”). Many music lovers of the Gen X and Millennial generations, who saw themselves as Hamlet types wanting to enact change but not knowing how, took it to their hearts.

Choreographer, movement director, and theatremaker Steven Hoggett, who co-founded the physical theatre company Frantic Assembly (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) in the 1990s, co-directs and adapts the piece with interdisciplinary artist and designer Christine Jones, whom he met on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Hoggett achieved mainstream prominence with docudrama Black Watch, which is about soldiers on the frontline in Iraq and earned him an Olivier Award for Best Theatre Choreographer in 2009.

As an English Literature undergraduate at Swansea University, Hoggett studied all of Shakespeare’s plays during his degree – “But not really!” As is often the way, each play received one lecture and a seminar before moving on to the next. “For a long time, I rarely went to see Shakespeare – for my generation, there were a lot of productions involving men in trench coats and women in gossamer dresses that were set in places like Guantanamo Bay. But I’ve always kept reading the plays”, he explains.

Coming to Hamlet Hail to the Thief, he “felt secure with the iambic pentameter and the world of the play. Hamlet is incredibly political but we haven’t focused on that. It’s a given and the audiences are smart. They don’t need help to understand that.” Indeed, it goes without saying that the political climate is no less fraught now than it was in 2003.

Hoggett became a fan of Radiohead during the band’s initial rise to fame in the 1990s when he was in his twenties. “I couldn’t believe The Bends [the band’s second album]. Then OK Computer was completely different. My musical understanding is very different because of them. They move the goalposts every time and have an ability to create songs that unnerve the individual. Their songs are about people, politics, places, and relationships with unsettling, beautiful, and sophisticated musical structures”.

Christine Jones, who curated Radiohead’s digital art installation Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, first had the idea of bringing the band and Hamlet together several years ago when directing another production of the play. “She listens to all sorts of music and makes all kinds of connections. [Radiohead frontman] Thom Yorke wasn’t sure when she first suggested it but she kept asking and eventually he said yes!”, Hoggett explains.

Hoggett observes, “We have a challenge in that it’s a 400-year-old, four-hour play. We removed all the repetition and dialogue in which events are relayed – often beautifully so – and that cut out a third. It’s all about the emotional heart in our production. It’s about hurtling towards oblivion. How far you can go before your heart breaks is the central nugget of the play and Radiohead’s songs always ask, ‘Are you okay?’ Both Radiohead and Shakespeare ask questions that are uncomfortable and flirt with ideas that are tricky to get your head around.”

The rehearsal period for the show’s premiere in Manchester in spring 2025 was a short and highly intense three weeks. “Something happened and our speed was phenomenal. I’ve never known a process like it. It snowballed and got clearer. When we were looking at the duel, Thom went over to the musicians and the meeting of the bodies in the space and the band playing all clicked”, Hoggett recalls.

The production is led by Samuel Blenkin, with whom Hoggett first worked when he took over as Scorpius Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. “Samuel surprised me so much on both shows and I didn’t know the full measure of him until now”, enthuses Hoggett. “He has a way of playing the intention of every line. He absolutely communicates and never grandstands. He has a way of breaking up a line and people have told me that it’s as if they’ve heard Hamlet for the first time.”

Among the supporting roles, Hoggett is particularly pleased with the production’s depiction of Horatio (Alby Baldwin) and his relationship with Hamlet – “it’s one of the best ever written and absolutely beautiful.” Ophelia (Ami Tredrea) is also given a more prominent role and shares the “To be or not to be speech” with Hamlet: “She starts it, she commits to it, and she actually feels it”, he remarks. “We looked into what’s not there. Why are Hamlet and Ophelia a couple? The text never shows them happy together. So, we’ve devised a two-minute sequence that shows them in love to a Radiohead song — and it’s joyful.”

Hamlet Hail to the Thief was first performed at Manchester’s Aviva Studios and then at Stratford upon Avon’s Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Hoggett comments, “In Manchester, it was like a gig and in Stratford it was for an informed audience of Shakespeare lovers. It did its job for both”. The show will have its London premiere at the multidisciplinary Barbican, where Black Watch had its London outing, and it perhaps combines the best of all worlds. Hoggett is delighted to be back. "We know the Barbican has a unique capacity to adapt and I love the simultaneous closing of the doors!”

Ahead of the Barbican run, Hoggett is looking forward to another "short and scary rehearsal period. We got it made the first time on nervy energy and we need to recreate that”. This time, “People have seen it and written about it and there’s hype. We’re not sitting back and we’re ready for it to earn its place”.

Hamlet Hail to the Thief is at the Barbican Theatre from 31 October – 23 January. Book Hamlet Hail to the Thief tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

This article will appear in the December 2026 issue of London Theatre Magazine.

Photo credit: Steven Hoggett in rehearsals with Christine Jones, Hamlet Hail to the Thief in 2025. (Photos by Manuel Harlan)