Is this a gaming column? A film one? Or a theatre one? Normally, I’d keep such editorial ruminations to myself—but, in this case, they’re kind of the point. For Grand Theft Hamlet, which has just started streaming on Mubi, is a documentary about a staging of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy in the trigger-happy video game Grand Theft Auto V. It isn’t just genre-defying, it’s genre-slaying. Blam!
Why would anyone do such a thing? The answer, as with so many other recent glorious madnesses, is Covid. Grand Theft Hamlet’s directors are Sam Crane, an actor who found himself unable to ply his trade during the long lockdowns, and Pinny Grylls, a documentarian who lives with Crane and their two children. “We’d got to the point,” Crane reflects on a pandemic-evoking Zoom call, “of, well, we might never get back to normal. There was a feeling of hopelessness about it.”
So Crane and his friend Mark Oosterveen, another actor, turned to violence—of the virtual variety—spending hours each day inside the online version of Grand Theft Auto. Here they could meet, talk and run a criminal empire; all things that were denied them in the real world. Pretty soon, Grylls was drawn in too, not least by the game’s cinematic potential. “Here was this brave new world in which anything was possible,” she explains. “We didn’t have any preconceptions about how we should be using the game.”
All of Grand Theft Hamlet was made within the game, with Grylls figuring out how to manoeuvre her character so as to replicate close-ups, establishing shots and other filmic norms. This means that we’re following Crane’s and Oosterveen’s avatars, shooting the breeze (and passersby) in Los Santos, GTA’s version of Los Angeles, when they chance upon an outdoor arena and their Big Idea. Could they stage something here? Could they do Hamlet? Out goes a call for help—on the game’s server, on YouTube—and auditions begin.
What follows is a melting pot—of forms, of people, of their varying ability levels. We meet, or at least we meet the in-game incarnations of, a literary agent on her nephew’s PlayStation (“It seems like my only opportunity to audition for Hamlet,” she says, endearingly, although she leaves the project early on); an actor who has voiced other video games (“I’m... Pharah in Overwatch!”); and the documentary’s greatest character, ParTeb, who doesn’t join the cast so much as he just hangs around. Wearing an alien costume. Occasionally gunning down unwanted interlopers.
ParTeb doesn’t know Hamlet when he phases into the auditions, but he does know the Qur’an—and recites a passage from memory. It’s a solemn, beautiful moment in an irreverent film. Or is it? “We recently had a screening in Turkey,” says Grylls, “and people were falling around laughing at that scene. And I was like, ‘Why is it so funny?’ And a woman replied, ‘Imagine someone turning up and doing the Lord’s Prayer as an audition piece!’” Cultural relativism in a console.
ParTeb just hangs around. Wearing an alien costume.Gunning down unwanted interlopers
Much of Grand Theft Hamlet is hilarious. Its most affecting parts—two arguments—are not. One is between Crane and Grylls over how much time he’s spending in the virtual world at the expense of his family. Another is between Crane and Oosterveen over the meaningfulness of what they’re doing. Unlike Crane, Oosterveen was alone during the lockdowns; emphatically alone. At one point in the film, he reveals that he is the last member of his family left alive. This production of Hamlet was, for him, more than just a pastime.
“Hearing him have the bravery to express that honestly, about how important it was for him, made me realise again what the true nature of the project was,” admits Crane. “And that’s something that I think carried through to the end.”
And to the end they go. Grand Theft Hamlet concludes with an abridged version of the final performance, just as the documentary itself was abridged from some 300 to 400 hours of gameplay. With its mix of amateur and professional performers, all constrained by the limited possibilities of the controllers in their hands, this is no RSC production. But which RSC production ever ferried its audience to a nearby yacht? Or set a scene atop a blimp (which subsequently explodes)?
None of it has put off Grand Theft Hamlet’s directors. “The whole idea of merging these genres is really exciting, and I hope more of it happens,” says Crane as our video call winds down, before Grylls adds, “I think we’re definitely at the foothills of something really interesting.” Grand Theft Auto VI, the next game in the series, is due later this year. There are, you feel, new peaks ahead.
