It’s solely January, however the eccentric, formidable documentary Grand Theft Hamlet will certainly find yourself as certainly one of 2025’s most fascinating films. 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 inside 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, exhibiting the digital avatars of the actors as they try to drag collectively one thing that appears unattainable. 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 informed 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 absolutely embracing the mayhem the shape afforded them. However when it’s on, Grand Theft Hamlet appears like a shot of lightning, with the perfect moments being the fully surprising 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 hottest opinions of the film on Letterboxd: They’re completely plagued by love for ParTeb, a aspect 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 certainly one of Grand Theft Hamlet’s highlights, after rehearsals of the deliberate manufacturing have been halted a number of instances 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 a large 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 really really feel like stay theater, full with the dangerous parts of probability: Something can occur throughout a stay efficiency, together with viewers interference. When ParTeb presents 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 surprising flip of occasions makes the second really 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 desires come true inside a chaotic sport. Some folks play the sport with out committing crimes. Others roleplay as highschool college students. Some folks play as an assassin-for-hire, whereas others faux to be cops. All of them should navigate the important pressure between their particular person targets, what the sport was truly designed for, and the targets of each different participant round them.
This identical pressure arose when Previous Lives director Celine Tune tried to mount a manufacturing of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull in The Sims 4. Polygon’s Nicole Carpenter famous how that supplied a problem to the manufacturing, but additionally added further parts of humor and stunning profundity, identical to in GTA Hamlet:
Sims, in fact, function with “free will,” that means that if they’ve a unique must be fulfilled — say, they’re hungry or have to pee — they’ll try this, quite than what they’re commanded to do by the participant.
That makes making a stay manufacturing, the place the Sims (as actors) ought to comply with the participant’s each transfer, way more chaotic. Nevertheless it additionally helps reimagine this basic textual content in a means that’s each profound and hilarious.
Spontaneous motion isn’t the one place the place GTA Hamlet positive aspects power from its type. When the climax happens and characters begin dying left and proper, GTA On-line’s kill feed dutifully reviews every dying. (Spoiler alert for a greater than 400-year-old-play, I suppose.) “Queen_Gertrude has chosen the simple means out.” “Hamlet_thedane killed King_Claudius.” “Hamlet_thedane has chosen the simple means out.” In these moments, Grand Theft Hamlet greatest connects the huge distance between the historical past of stay theater and the brand new medium it’s been pulled into.
Hamlet has been carried out untold numbers of instances, in untold numbers of the way, however by no means fairly like this earlier than. It’s an exhilarating 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 flicks and theater productions profiting from the spontaneity of online game worlds as a possible location for narrative motion. The documentary can be a useful reminder to artists working in (not-so) new and troublesome types that typically, the chaos is the purpose.
Grand Theft Hamlet is at present in theaters.
