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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Mark Fisher

Hamlet Hail to the Thief review – study of righteous anger links Shakespeare to Radiohead

A woman in the foreground, dressed in black, holding up a skull to face her, with a young man in the background looking at the skull.
A lucid, angsty revenge tragedy … Romaya Weaver (Gravedigger) and Samuel Blenkin (Hamlet) in Hamlet Hail to the Thief. Photograph: Manuel Harlan

In all the hype around the collaborators on this co-production between the Royal Shakespeare Company and Factory International, it is easy to forget what is at its centre. It is not the co-directors, Steven Hoggett and Christine Jones, despite CVs that stretch from American Idiot to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. It is not even Thom Yorke, the Radiohead frontman who has gutted and repurposed the band’s doomy 2003 album Hail to the Thief for the show’s soundtrack.

No, it is a 425-year-old play by William Shakespeare – and a startling performance by Samuel Blenkin as the bereaved prince, who does indeed have as much to rail against the world about as Yorke and his band did in the aftermath of September 11 and the ascendancy of George W Bush.

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