I’ve seen a lot of interpretations of Hamlet — different actors taking on Shakespeare’s iconic story in both stage and film formats. But Grand Theft Hamlet offers something I’ve never seen before, which is a production of the play set in the world of GTA Online. The upcoming film isn’t just a beat-for-beat recreation of the play within the game, though; it’s actually a documentary about the project’s staging and organization, which took some serious doing.
Co-directed by the U.K.-based married couple Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane, the former being a documentarian and the latter an actor, Grand Theft Hamlet came about because of the pandemic. With the world in various states of lockdown and quarantining, and Crane out of work as an actor given that whole situation, the pair turned to video games as a place to stage a play, and filmed this documentary about the process.
The result looks both hilarious and deadly serious, in turns, as the trailer makes very clear. The bizarre project keeps getting interrupted by other players, and yet the heartwarming bit is the number of other players who’ve decided to actually help make it happen, despite the inherent difficulties of the setting. This is the kind of weird art project I love to see.
Grand Theft Hamlet is heading to theaters on January 17, and will be streaming on Mubi at a future date.
