Radiohead meets the Bard: a mash-up for the ages — and kryptonite for purists, you would possibly suppose. However a brand new, dance-infused tackle “Hamlet,” set to the band’s 2003 LP, “Hail to the Thief,” which opened in Manchester, England, on Wednesday, is not any mere gimmick.
There’s lots within the album, each aesthetically and thematically, that resonates with Shakespeare’s story of usurpation, revenge and self-doubt: the title’s allusion to political infamy, the music’s gloomy timbre, the anxiously introspective lyrics. Instantly, the album’s opening line — “Are you such a dreamer / To place the world to rights?” — has echoes of Hamlet’s well-known speech, “The time is out of joint, O cursed spite / That ever I used to be born to set it proper!”
“Hamlet Hail to the Thief” — co-directed by Christine Jones and Steve Hoggett for the Royal Shakespeare Firm, and co-created by the Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke — runs at Aviva Studios by means of Might 18 earlier than transferring to the corporate’s house in Stratford-upon-Avon in June. Jones is greatest referred to as a set designer, and Hoggett as a choreographer. (They labored collectively on “Harry Potter and the Cursed Baby,” for which Jones gained a Tony in 2018.) On this interpretation, the story is drastically abridged — clocking in at comfortably beneath two hours — and there’s a sturdy emphasis on music and visuals.
The onstage motion is interspersed with subtly reworked snippets and deconstructed riffs from the Radiohead songs. A gaggle of musicians, supervised by Tom Brady, performs behind glass on the rear of the stage, whereas two singers belt out vocals from a balcony. The actors periodically slip into trance-like dance strikes, combining unusual, synchronized gesticulations with an assortment of tumbling, swirling and rolling motions. They dance a creepy waltz to the funky bass line of “Go to Sleep,” and the music’s refrain — “One thing huge is gonna occur / Over my lifeless physique” — portentously signposts the carnage that’s to return.
The music and motion mix to evoke a suitably eerie sense of menace, though it’s a disgrace that the manufacturing’s neatly rendered monochrome aesthetic has change into so commonplace — thanks largely to to its deployment in successive high-profile Jamie Lloyd productions — that it scarcely registers. Black-clad actors, a bit of obscured by smoke; a darkish stage illuminated by stark spotlights or neon rectangles: It’s a gloaming-by-numbers, virtually too crisp to be spooky. (The set design is by the collective AMP Scenography, in collaboration with Sadra Tehrani.)
Samuel Blenkin performs the title position with an endearing mix of pouting, schoolboy recalcitrance and self-effacing ennui. And Paul Hilton brings a stringy physicality to Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, whose homicide of Hamlet’s father, and swift marriage to his mom, Gertrude, units up the story. On this rendering Claudius is a guilt-ridden nervous wreck, puffing on a cigarette as he prays, and much more twitchy than the Black Prince himself. At one level, the 2 males have interaction in a spotlit dance, their our bodies tangling and their heads butting, to represent their battle.
However the different characters don’t fairly come to life on this inevitably considerably rushed telling. We by no means get an opportunity to settle of their firm, so their woes ring hole: Claudia Harrison’s Gertrude is frantic, however extra within the method of somebody contesting a parking ticket than a not too long ago bereaved widow who has ill-advisedly married her brother-in-law; the pathos of Ami Tredrea’s Olivia feels unearned, and due to this fact overwrought.
And the dance, although arresting in itself, has the regrettable impact of sucking power out of the drama. At occasions, the dialogue feels so incongruous with the mise-en-scène that it’s as if Hamlet has stumbled throughout a funereal tai chi troupe.
This manufacturing seeks to retell “Hamlet” in a fashion that transcends language, distilling it to an essence. Since language is integral to Shakespeare’s enduring attraction, that is each admirably formidable and a bit of silly.
“Hamlet Hail to the Thief” is a compelling spectacle, and boasts maybe probably the most achieved tribute band I’ve ever seen. The singers, Ed Begley and Megan Hill, imbue the Radiohead songs with an ethereal magnificence greater than worthy of Yorke himself. (Two numbers sung by Blenkin and Tredrea are additionally spectacular.) Nevertheless it seems like a bit of Shakespeare has been added to Radiohead’s music, somewhat than the opposite manner round. The manufacturing can take a spot within the pantheon of flawed however worthwhile undertakings, like these bloated idea albums of the Seventies that have been forerunners to “Hail to the Thief.”
