Hamlet Hail to the Thief could have been rotten but redeems Radiohead’s ‘record that got away’ | Alexis Petridis

The band’s uneven 2003 album has been judiciously reworked to accompany a staging of Shakespeare’s tragedy with quite extraordinary results

According to the programme notes, Thom Yorke had serious reservations about director Christine Jones’ idea to stage a production of Hamlet featuring music from Radiohead’s 2003 album Hail to the Thief. Who can blame him? Many criticisms have been laid at Radiohead’s door but being hopelessly naff isn’t one of them, and, alas, naff is very much the adjective you’d apply to a lot of attempts to meld Shakespeare and rock music.

You’re often in the realm of high camp – portentous, Bard-quoting heavy metal lyrics; Return to the Forbidden Planet’s jokey blending of The Tempest with 50s rock’n’roll; 2015’s These Paper Bullets, which relocated Much Ado About Nothing to swinging London, complete with Beatle-y songs by Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong – or of buttock-clenching disasters like Catch My Soul, a 1971 rock adaptation of Othello which required Black American soul singer PP Arnold to star opposite impresario Jack Good, playing the title role in blackface.