Hamlet Hail to the Thief at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon was nothing short of wonderful. While not my all time favorite of the shows we’ve seen on this trip (that honor goes to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), it is a very close second. The conceit of this production is mixing text from Shakespeare’s Hamlet with music from Radiohead’s album Hail to the Thief. They were really creative with the name haha. But seriously, any lack of creativity in the name was more than made up for in the production itself!
Firstly, I loved the way they treated the text in this production. The entire show was 1 hour 40 minutes with no intermission. Obviously, this means they had to cut out a lot of text. Knowing Hamlet as well as I have gotten to, there were some moments where I was expecting to hear a bit of language only to find it had been cut. The only moment that I truly missed was getting to hear Gertrude’s final line, which I’ll talk more about when I discuss the final sequence of this production. My favorite change was adding in a repetition of Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy (though, in this production, not so much of a soliloquy). Each of the actors knew how to expertly use the text, which only added to the experience.
In addition to cutting and rearranging text, they also had the challenge of adding in this Radiohead music. I’ll be honest, I don’t know much of Radiohead’s music. Nothing against them, just not what I choose to listen to. That being said, I did know enough about their sound to not be too upset when I couldn’t understand the lyrics being sung. The music conveyed the feeling of the lyrics without necessarily needing to hear them all. At times it was an honest to God rock show! While these musicians were playing their hearts out, the cast all came on and danced in wonderfully choreographed interpretive pieces. I believe that this choreography is what made this production work. Since so much text was cut out, the director had to find a way to convey the story that we were missing. These movement pieces perfectly bridged the gap and even gave us extra story that is not shown on stage in traditional Hamlet productions. My favorite of these additions was the added storytelling between Hamlet and Ophelia. We got to see the true ecstasy that they felt together and then got to see how it devolved once Hamlet had been visited by his father’s ghost.
As mentioned above, the one aspect that I had some thoughts about (not necessarily negative) was the way the end sequence was done – the final fight where everyone except Horatio dies. It turned into a literal dance battle, and all of the text was cut out until after everyone had been injured and Hamlet was about to die. I think that some of the storytelling got lost here, such as the revelation that Claudius is trying to poison Hamlet with the chalice of wine that Gertrude ends up drinking. This becomes abundantly clear in the original version when she exclaims “The drink, the drink! I am poisoned.” Given how much chaos was happening onstage during the final sequence, I don’t think I would have picked up on this plot point had I not been actively looking for it.
To end on a high note, the use of the “To be or not to be” speech was pretty ingenious. To get into this, I have to discuss the treatment of Ophelia in this production. As opposed to the original text, in which Ophelia does not seem to have much agency throughout, this production portrays Ophelia as a feisty and opinionated young woman who, after going through unimaginable amounts of grief in a short period of time, devolves into madness. Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” is given directly to Ophelia in this production instead of the traditional soliloquy to the audience, and I honestly don’t think I want to see it any other way ever again. It makes so much sense for Hamlet to have been the one to put the idea of suicide into Ophelia’s mind in the first place. To make it ever more heartbreaking, they had Ophelia repeat this speech as a soliloquy right before her death. She is wandering and alone, stuttering through the words as they echo around her until a trap door opens up and she falls in. Even if the rest of the show had been bad, that one theatrical moment alone would’ve made this a show worth seeing.
Thankfully, the show was incredible all around. I’ll be honest, this is the first time I’ve actually felt something for these characters while watching this show. The performers were amazing, the design was awesome, and the adaptation filled a centuries old script with new life.
Theatre in London U of A 