The complete cast and band for Hamlet Hail to the Thief have been announced ahead of the production’s London premiere at the Barbican Theatre, where it runs from 31 October 2026 to 23 January 2027. The show, presented by ATC Music Group, Vivek J. Tiwary for TEG+ and Nate Koch, is a Royal Shakespeare Company and Factory International production that fuses Shakespeare’s text with Radiohead’s 2003 album Hail to the Thief, personally reworked by the band’s frontman Thom Yorke and performed live on stage.
The production follows an acclaimed world premiere at Aviva Studios — home of Factory International in Manchester — and arrives in London as one of the most eagerly anticipated theatrical events of the 2026–27 season. Tickets are on sale now at hamlethailtothethief.com.
The Cast
Samuel Blenkin, known to television audiences from the FX series Alien: Earth, reprises his role as Hamlet, having originated the part at the world premiere. He is joined by Ami Tredrea (The Shitheads, Royal Court) as Ophelia, Paul Hilton (Mass, Donmar Warehouse) as Claudius and the Ghost, Claudia Harrison (The Line of Beauty, Almeida) as Gertrude, Alby Baldwin (The Unbelievers, Royal Court) as Horatio, Brandon Grace (Summerfolk, National Theatre) as Laertes, and Felipe Pacheco (The Hunger Games, Troubadour Theatre) as Guildenstern.
Newly announced cast members completing the company include Nicolas Tennant (Mother Courage and Her Children, Globe Theatre) as Polonius, Merryl Ansah (The Lion King, Lyceum Theatre) as Gravedigger and understudy Gertrude, Miles Barrow (Game of Thrones, RSC) as Rosencrantz and understudy Hamlet, Halim Diwani — making his professional stage debut — as understudy Laertes, Horatio and Guildenstern, and Gavin James (Rosie, Adelphi Theatre) as understudy Claudius and Polonius. Romaya Weaver and Marienella Phillips round out the ensemble in a range of roles including Player Queen and Gravedigger respectively.
The Band and Creative Team
The full original band returns to the production. Ed Begley and Meg Hill provide vocals, with Tom Brady serving as Music Supervisor, Music Director and Keys 2. Jenny Clifford and Adam Martin play guitars, Joe Downard handles bass guitar, Shane Forbes is on drums, and Tom Knowles is Associate Music Supervisor and Keys 1. Two additional cover singers, Emilio Moreno Arias and Josephina Ortiz Lewis, have also joined the company.
The production is co-directed and co-created by Olivier award-winner Steven Hoggett and Tony and Olivier award-winner Christine Jones, who have worked together previously on productions including Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, American Idiot and Let the Right One In. Hoggett’s recent credits include choreographing David Byrne’s Who Is the Sky and Nye at the National Theatre, while Jones is the creator and artistic director of Theatre For One, which performed at the Barbican as recently as March 2026. The scenography is by AMP featuring Sadra Tehrani, with sound design by Gareth Fry, lighting design by Jessica Hung Han Yun, and costume design by Lisa Duncan.
The Album and the Concept
Hail to the Thief, released in 2003, is Radiohead’s sixth studio album and features singles including ‘There There’, ‘2+2=5’ and ‘Go to Sleep’. Recorded in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and amid the ensuing ‘War on Terror’, the record is steeped in paranoia and dystopian anxiety, drawing on Orwellian themes and Brothers Grimm-style imagery — qualities that lend themselves to the political corruption and psychological unravelling at the heart of Shakespeare’s Danish tragedy.
In this staging, the deconstructed album is performed live on stage by the cast of musicians and actors, with Yorke’s orchestrations weaving Radiohead’s songs through Shakespeare’s text. The production centres on Hamlet and Ophelia’s reckoning with the lies and corruption of their war-like state, a theme that resonates with the album’s original context. Inspired in part by Yorke’s work on this project, Radiohead released Hail to the Thief – Live Recordings last September, drawing on archived material from live shows between 2003 and 2009.
Radiohead, formed in 1985 and comprising Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Ed O’Brien and Philip Selway, have sold more than 30 million albums worldwide, won six Grammy Awards and four Ivor Novello Awards, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019. Yorke himself was awarded the Ivor Novello Fellowship Award in May 2026.
Press night is 12 November 2026. Access performances include a captioned performance on 28 November 2026, an audio described performance on 12 December 2026, and a chilled performance on 16 January 2027. Full details and tickets are available at hamlethailtothethief.com.
