From Harry Potter to Hamlet: Sam Blenkin’s bold new West End role

InTV hit Alien: Earth, Sam Blenkin played mercurial young genius Boy Kavalier, an Elon Musk-ish tech brat, and had a ball unleashing xenomorph hell.

“I usually play broken young people, so I was thrilled they trusted me to deliver this sinister bravado”, he told the London Standard.

Well, prepare for the next evolution of Blenkin as the original mercurial young genius, Hamlet.

Hamlet Hail to the Thief is a bold melding of Shakespeare’s Danish prince and Radiohead’s satirical album

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But this new show at the Barbican is no ordinary production; this is Hamlet Hail to the Thief, a melding of the Dane and Radiohead’s most satirical album, which debuted to acclaim in Manchester last year.

“It’s an interesting alchemy,” he says. “It’s a reinterpretation of Hamlet, a scalpelcut one hour 40 minute version of the play interspersed with these unbelievable orchestrations that Thom Yorke has made of the Hail to the Thief album.”

Just as the album dissected the George W Bush era, expect this to take that scalpel to our Trumpian times — but for all the updating, Hamlet is still Hamlet.

As Blenkin puts it, “you have this hall of ghosts behind you of great actors”, but his “massive insecurity” over it was dealt with in the rehearsal room.

“We say we’re lifting the curse off, the weight of history, which opened up the role to be more playful and surprising.”

The 30 year-old is “a country bumpkin” from Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, where youth theatre led him to drama school at the Guildhall.

His break came in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — “they needed actors who looked 15, which I did then, and still do now.

Blenkin’s break came in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Charlie Gray

“I’m not complaining, it pays the bills”, but then came a role in Donald Glover’s Atlanta, where he had a taste of creative joy: “It was the first room I went into where the best idea is the idea that wins.

“We were improvising and coming up with some ridiculous things.”

It has informed his work ever since, and even made him brave enough to make suggestions to Yorke. “The first time we were working on ‘To be or not to be’, there was a piece of music that was pulsing underneath,” he says.

“I felt there was an unhelpful clash and plucked up the courage to voice this to Thom.

“He took about 10 minutes with the band, didn’t say what he was going to do and then we started again. Halfway through this shift in the music happened that just electrified me. It was extraordinary, he is extremely collaborative.”

Blenkin was filming season two of Alien: Earth before Hamlet Hail to the Thief, but even on such a highly pressured megabudget TV show, the playfully collaborative methodology of this burgeoning star comes with him: “Basically I try and get away with as much as I can.” Martin Robinson

Hamlet Hail to the Thief is at the Barbican from October 31 to January 23

I usually play broken young people, so I was thrilled they trusted me to deliver this sinister bravado