Grand Theft Hamlet
Written and Directed by Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls
Starring Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen
Runtime 1 hour and 29 minutes
Unrated
Opening in theaters January 17

by Tina Kakadelis, Associate Editor

“This film is shot entirely inside the video game Grand Theft Auto Online. A violent and beautiful virtual world where almost anything is possible…”

These are the opening words of Grand Theft Hamlet. To stage an entire production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet with strangers in the world of Grand Theft Auto Online is the sort of gonzo idea that could have only been cooked up during the height of the Covid-19 lockdowns. Two out-of-work actors, Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen, are blowing off some steam in January of 2021 by playing the online multiplayer game; much like the self-contained video game of the same name, GTA Online allows players to wreak havoc across the fictional city of Los Santos (based on Los Angeles). Sam and Mark stumble across an outdoor bandshell structure and the idea is born. What if the two friends staged a production of Hamlet entirely within the game and filmed it?

Grand Theft Hamlet is not their production of Hamlet but rather the documented effort of attempting to do something that has never been done before. Just as humans hadn’t gone to the moon before 1969, humanity has not seen the famous “To be, or not to be” monologue interrupted by someone firing a rocket launcher while dressed as a mutant lizard until now. On paper, Shakespeare and GTA seem like they have nothing in common, but, as Sam and Mark reiterate throughout the film, both are violent in nature. Hamlet is a tragedy where every character dies, and in-game avatars die constantly in GTA, so it’s an unexpected match made in heaven.

From the beginning, Mark and Sam recognize that their desire to stage Hamlet in GTA is unprecedented and odd. They say there is likely very little crossover between those who enjoy Shakespeare and those who are consistently playing GTA Online. Once the two friends fully commit to their idea, they film an in-game video where they ask for auditions. They’re genuinely and pleasantly shocked to find that people show up. Some are there because they, like Sam and Mark, are out-of-work actors desperate to flex their creative muscles again. Others are GTA players who accidentally stumble across these auditions and find themselves falling in love with the spirit of Mark and Sam. One random GTA player joins the group but has no desire to act. Instead, he serves as a bodyguard of sorts for the troupe of actors as they rehearse across the massive open-world landscape of the game.

Amidst the friends’ time spent working on the logistics of rehearsal and staging is a very honest reflection of their mental states during isolation. Sam lives with his partner, Pinny Grylls, and their two children. Sam gets Pinny involved in their Hamlet production, and she learns to play GTA for the first time. Mark lives alone. During the early months of Covid, Mark loses a family member and, in a lull of action while gaming, he mentions how lonely he’s felt. That was his last blood relative, and while many others spent the lockdown leaning on family members, Mark hasn’t had that luxury. It’s a very real feeling that many struggled with as the world as we knew it fundamentally changed overnight. Many other Covid-era documentaries don’t manage to capture the true mania of this time period. We had all the time in the world, which was freeing, yet confining. We spent our days cultivating sourdough starters, weeding our Animal Crossing islands, and falling into Tiger King, but, when the distractions stopped, we were alone in such a stark way. Grand Theft Hamlet is perhaps the first truly great pandemic documentary that captures the newfound freedom that allowed us to follow our strangest inclinations and the weighty, lonely isolation that remains difficult to shake.

“It is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” While that famous monologue is from Macbeth, not Hamlet, it is performed by one of the players in Grand Theft Hamlet. This snippet of the larger speech speaks to the essence of the endeavor. To stage a production of Hamlet in a video game is ridiculous, filled with chaos that has no purpose other than to feel something. In the larger scheme of things, it doesn’t change the course of human history, but it does change the lives of the people who participate. One of the members of the troupe mentions that she finally felt confident to come out as transgender because of this experience. Sam and Mark found a purpose to get them out of bed every day. They became obsessive about it, and the project took over their lives for a while, but it very well may have been the thing that saved them.

Grand Theft Hamlet would make a lovely double feature with Sing Sing. They both feature Shakespeare performed in unlikely places, GTA Online and Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison, yet it’s these performances that bring a new life to Shakespeare’s words. There is melancholy in the way they create art because it’s the only thing that will provide any sort of balm in their predicament, but there’s also such unrestrained passion and joy. Grand Theft Hamlet is an explosion of heart amid a backdrop of machine gun fire.

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