(seen at the afternoon performance on 10th November 2026)
There have been many attempts at a musical of “Hamlet.” We can ignore “The Lion King”, too furry; but others include “Rockabye Hamlet” and “Something Rockin’ In The State of Denmark”. Nothing human-based have lasted.
This is something else. The music of Radiohead and a heavily edited Bill the Quill script. To the monkey mind, this is another miss.
We get a meaningless title. Why would Hamlet hail someone who stole his father’s position? What other thefts are there? Murders, yes. Robbery – see “Othello.”
Play. The strongest part of the work. Christine Jones and Steven Hoggett give us a “theatre for schools” style nicely short version. Covers all the essential lines and scenes, a neat 1 hour 40 minutes with no interval. Trevor Nunn could even learn a thing or two.
In particular, Ophelia’s death is effective. The final duel, however, is rather obscure and a ghostly repeating “To Be” a second time is just wrong.
Polonius’s death also wasn’t visible from where the monkey was sitting. Nicolas Tennant got dragged off stage by the legs – so he was either dead or drunk, it assumes. Could have been a heart attack, but there were no paramedics.
Moving on, the cast are RSC standard verse speakers to a person. Beautifully rounded delivery – can hear every word and even enjoy a little interpretation as actors picked an emphasis.
Sadly, same cannot be said for the singing. A pair of cuckoos popped out of holes in an ugly (AMP credited) set, to warble unintelligibly over a far too loud bass line – a rare Gareth Fry failure. No idea what kind of music Radiohead write, and it added nothing but running time and distraction.
Jessica Hung Han Yun also provides an odd moment raising the house lights to drag intimacy away from a key scene, but redeems herself with some rather good flashes of colour later on.
Choreography by Jess Williams varies from interpreting the music to simply trying to fill time with some strange arm waving. Celebrating Hamlet and Ophilia’s love is an outstanding moment. Some random stomping around later on, a lowlight.
Samuel Blenkin’s Hamlet is a messy upper-class boy child. Literally slobbering, his energy and full command of language impress, though he turns out not to move through a particularly broad character arc with an unimpressive final scene.
Ami Tredrea is a mature Ophilia. Matched perfectly with her immature boyfriend, their attraction is real, her anguish even more so.
Fine friend to Hamlet, he would do well to listen to his wise Horatio. Alby Baldwin is stability, alas rejected in a strong performance.asfasd
Halim Diwani (in for absent Brandon Grace) as Laertes is a worthwhile contrast. Diwani does his best with truncated motivation in later scenes, his earlier interactions with Tennant’s Polonius allowing greater chance to prove both of their abilities.
Claudia Harrison demonstrates just how a mother fails to connect with an angry child, while Paul Hilton is a detached Claudius who tolerates rather than dismisses the situation.
There are no revelations in the text itself, beyond proving it can be distilled to a powerful essence. Frankly, on the music inspiration front, leave that to Taylor Swift, is all the monkey is saying.
Radiohead are a useful sauce to disguise something “good for the child,” the adaptation a decent gateway into Shakespeare, but no more than a chaotic experiment for those familiar with the Bard, alas. Sound and fury, signifying nothing. No need to go call out the guard.
3 stars.