Manuel Harlan has photographed Hamlet Hail to the Thief in performance at the Barbican Theatre, with Samuel Blenkin back as the Prince and the Radiohead score played live around him.
New production photographs of Hamlet Hail to the Thief were released on Monday 9 November, a little over a week into its London run and three days before the critics are invited. They are the third set of pictures we have carried from this staging, after Harlan's images from the rehearsal room in October and Alex Lake's black-and-white frames from the final rehearsals; this is the official production photography for the London run.
Blenkin is pictured opposite Ami Tredrea as Ophelia and Alby Baldwin as Horatio. Paul Hilton, who doubles Claudius and the Ghost, appears with Nicolas Tennant as Polonius, with Brandon Grace as Laertes, and with Claudia Harrison as Gertrude, Romaya Weaver as the Player Queen and Merryl Ansah as the Gravedigger. Several of the wider shots belong to the whole company, caught in the shafts of light that cross the stage.
The company also includes Felipe Pacheco as Guildenstern and Miles Barrow as Rosencrantz, with Marienella Phillips, Halim Diwani and Gavin James among the understudies. The original band is back in full: Ed Begley and Meg Hill on vocals, Jenny Clifford and Adam Martin on guitars, Joe Downard on bass and Shane Forbes on drums, with Tom Brady, the music supervisor and music director, and Tom Knowles, the associate music supervisor, on keys. Emilio Moreno Arias and Josephina Ortiz Lewis join them as cover singers.
Christine Jones adapted the play with Steven Hoggett, and the two direct it together. Its music is Radiohead's 2003 album Hail to the Thief, the band's sixth, which Thom Yorke has reworked and orchestrated for a stage company of actors and musicians. The album was made in the shadow of 9/11 and the "War on Terror" that followed, and the production takes its cue from that unease: under Elsinore's new king, Hamlet and Ophelia slowly wake up to the lies and corruption running through a country on a war footing.
The staging is a Royal Shakespeare Company and Factory International production, presented in London by ATC Music Group, Vivek J. Tiwary for TEG+ and Nate Koch. It had its world premiere last year at Aviva Studios in Manchester, Factory International's home, and the Barbican run continues the venue's long association with the RSC.
Hamlet Hail to the Thief runs at the Barbican Theatre until Saturday 23 January 2027, with press night on Thursday 12 November 2026. A captioned performance is scheduled for Saturday 28 November 2026, an audio-described one for Saturday 12 December 2026 and a chilled performance for Saturday 16 January 2027, all at 2.30pm.
