Another production of Hamlet at the RSC literally weeks after the last one would normally be a cause for confusion and/or consternation, but in the case of this unique new adaptation it’s worthy of both exception and celebration, the much-hyped co-production with Factory International fusing the Bard’s classic with Radiohead’s 2003 album Hail To The Thief to thrilling effect.

Shakespeare’s masterwork has always been a compelling watch, but Christine Jones and Steven Hoggett’s distilled adaptation (at 100 minutes it’s the shortest version I’ve seen by some margin) ups the ante by adding music and movement to create an innovative audio and visual feast that always stays true to the drama at its heart.

Jones made the link between the play and the album some 20 years ago. Listening to the latter while working on another production of the former, she noted similar themes and attitudes in the lyrics - not least singer Thom Yorke’s paranoia-fuelled tirades against power, corruption and deceit in the wake of the 2000 US presidential election - and a seed was sown.

Two decades years later Yorke himself has reworked those songs to create a score - performed by a five-piece band sealed off in sound booths and augmented by vocalists Megan Hill and Ed Begley - that not only mirrors, but intensifies the tragedy unfolding on stage, swirling in and around the action like the almost ever-present fog of dry ice. It’s no Radiohead musical - no tunes are played in their entirety and many are little more than instrumental snippets or familiar beats - but everything is in its right place, from the heart-breaking Sail to the Moon of a suicidal Ophelia to the moody foreboding There, There that kicks in after Hamlet sees an apparition of his murdered father and sets off on a path for revenge.

The ghostly spectre is effectively realised via grimy video effects, but for the most part this is a low-tech production, grimly lit by Jessica Hung Han Yun and featuring a stark but effective industrial-style set, created by AMP featuring Sadra Tehrani, that resembles a rock band’s warehouse rehearsal space complete with amplifiers.

A nod towards its collaborators maybe, but Hamlet Hail To The Thief never feels weighed down by the hype or the ’Head, and while the snappy running time makes the pace relentless - it definitely plays at 45rpm not 33 - the drama is never remotely overlooked.

And what drama. I’ve saved the best till last because the uniformly excellent cast give it their all, physically as well as emotionally, and Cheltenham-born Samuel Blenkin is nothing short of spectacular in the title role. Brilliantly conveying the grieving prince’s spiral into fear, paranoia, anger, madness and murder, his manic, twitching, convulsing performance is there sort of captivating tour de force that will live long in the memory.

As will this dynamic, innovative and exhilarating theatrical experience. Now can we have a Radiohead tour please?

5 stars

Reviewed by Steve Adams at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon on Thursday 12 April. Hamlet Hail To The Thief continues to show at the venue until Saturday 28 June.