It’s solely January, however the eccentric, formidable documentary Grand Theft Hamlet will certainly find yourself as one in every of 2025’s most fascinating motion pictures. Throughout England’s second lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, two unemployed actors who had been spending their time in Grand Theft Auto On-line determined to stage a manufacturing of Hamlet throughout the confines of the sport’s digital world. Their efficiency of the play (dubbed GTA Hamlet) was introduced strictly utilizing the huge digital cityscape of Los Santos, with their in-game avatars as actors.
Grand Theft Hamlet tells the story of the duo’s one-of-a-kind manufacturing, displaying the digital avatars of the actors as they try to drag collectively one thing that appears not possible. What emerges is a portrait of a digital theater firm always (and infrequently actually) going to battle to mount their manufacturing amid the pure pandemonium that’s GTA On-line.
Grand Theft Hamlet is an formidable documentary that hinges on capturing the thorny IRL moments of placing on a play within the digital world of GTA On-line. It doesn’t all the time work: some moments really feel scripted. (The filmmakers instructed Polygon that whereas they didn’t stage any of the drama, they did re-record traces of dialogue to wash up the audio.) In the end, the creators tried to regulate a completed product that was by no means going to be in management, as an alternative of totally embracing the mayhem the shape afforded them. However when it’s on, Grand Theft Hamlet seems like a shot of lightning, with the perfect moments being the fully sudden ones, because the chaos of the world repeatedly interferes with their makes an attempt to rehearse and mount the digital manufacturing.
Simply check out the preferred opinions of the film on Letterboxd: They’re completely suffering from love for ParTeb, a facet participant who injected pure chaos into the manufacturing. ParTeb was not one of many many actors recruited by creators Sam Crane, Pinny Grylls, and Mark Oosterveen to affix their manufacturing of Hamlet. ParTeb was a random passerby carrying a ridiculous alien outfit. First launched as a curious spectator, ParTeb turns into the doc’s comedic lifeblood.
In one in every of Grand Theft Hamlet’s highlights, after rehearsals of the deliberate manufacturing have been halted a number of occasions by in-game random gunfire and police exercise, ParTeb receives a casual promotion to Chief of Safety for the digital theater firm, offering deadly safety from his VTOL jet within the skies. The juxtaposition of the scrappy theater firm making an attempt to drag collectively a manufacturing with an enormous navy fighter jet hovering above them is precisely what makes GTA Hamlet particular.
ParTeb’s involvement and the troupe’s different random encounters with GTAO gamers helps make the formidable effort actually really feel like reside theater, full with the dangerous parts of likelihood: Something can occur throughout a reside efficiency, together with viewers interference. When ParTeb provides to audition “with my [virtual green alien] butt,” solely to get on stage and superbly recite a portion of the Quran, the sheer shock on the sudden flip of occasions makes the second actually magical.
Spontaneity is the important thing to GTA Hamlet’s success as a theatrical manufacturing, as it’s for any of the opposite numerous GTA On-line function gamers making an attempt to make their digital goals come true inside a chaotic recreation. Some individuals play the sport with out committing crimes. Others roleplay as highschool college students. Some individuals play as an assassin-for-hire, whereas others fake to be cops. All of them need to navigate the important pressure between their particular person targets, what the sport was really designed for, and the targets of each different participant round them.
This identical pressure arose when Previous Lives director Celine Track tried to mount a manufacturing of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull in The Sims 4. Polygon’s Nicole Carpenter famous how that offered a problem to the manufacturing, but in addition added further parts of humor and stunning profundity, similar to in GTA Hamlet:
Sims, in fact, function with “free will,” which means that if they’ve a special have to be fulfilled — say, they’re hungry or must pee — they’ll try this, reasonably than what they’re commanded to do by the participant.
That makes making a reside manufacturing, the place the Sims (as actors) ought to observe the participant’s each transfer, way more chaotic. Nevertheless it additionally helps reimagine this traditional textual content in a approach that’s each profound and hilarious.
Spontaneous motion isn’t the one place the place GTA Hamlet features power from its type. When the climax happens and characters begin dying left and proper, GTA On-line’s kill feed dutifully studies every loss of life. (Spoiler alert for a greater than 400-year-old-play, I suppose.) “Queen_Gertrude has chosen the straightforward approach out.” “Hamlet_thedane killed King_Claudius.” “Hamlet_thedane has chosen the straightforward approach out.” In these moments, Grand Theft Hamlet finest connects the huge distance between the historical past of reside theater and the brand new medium it’s been pulled into.
Hamlet has been carried out untold numbers of occasions, in untold numbers of the way, however by no means fairly like this earlier than. It’s an exciting reminder that there are all the time new methods to re-imagine our oldest and most enduring tales. It makes Grand Theft Hamlet an thrilling entry in a brand new wave of films and theater productions benefiting from the spontaneity of online game worlds as a possible location for narrative motion. The documentary can also be a useful reminder to artists working in (not-so) new and troublesome varieties that typically, the chaos is the purpose.
Grand Theft Hamlet is at the moment in theaters.