Trigger warning: Brief references to suicidal ideation, blood and violence. Trigger warning: Brief references to suicidal ideation, blood and violence.
Trigger warning: Brief references to suicidal ideation, blood and violence.
It’s Grand Theft Auto. There’s violence. There’s blood. There’s crime, there’s grime. And now, for the first time ever, there’s Shakespeare. Emerging from the 2021 lockdown stasis of English Actors Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen, filmed and edited by documentary filmmaker Pinny Grylls (Crane’s partner), Grand Theft Hamlet chronicles the unorthodox production process of the world’s first Shakespeare staged via video game. In fact, this rendition of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, performed and documented entirely in the open-world heist-filled action-adventure game Grand Theft Auto: Online, went on to win the Innovation Award at the January 2023 Stage Awards in London.
The first five minutes of the documentary allow us a brief insight into the felony-ridden dreams of Crane and Oosterveen, two out-of-work actors turning to “anything that takes you away from the crushing inevitability of your pointless life.” Upon Crane’s discovery of an abandoned performance space – a mirror of the real-world closures of creative spaces – the rest of the documentary’s eight-nine-minute runtime is dedicated to the planning, staging, and final performance of Hamlet. Crane and Oosterveen are a well-suited duo, cracking on through the plethora of problems that come at them, both in-game and out. Grylls comes in as the veritable gamer newbie, immediately questioning them on whether their vision is achievable while also being one of the driving forces behind the film in the end.
From the montage of auditions to the sublime cut scenes of the world of Los Santos, to the consistent police chases, to the rehearsal process featuring several renditions of the most well-known soliloquy of all time (including one on a beachside boulder mimicking the iconic David Tennant Hamlet (2009) poster) the documentary effectively keeps its viewer engrossed in both the world and the story. The process of filming the documentary entirely in-game is somehow deeply satisfying as a result. Grylls clearly has an stunning eye for combining the visuals of the video game world with the recorded voiceovers to highlight each and every moment of the production process, from car chases to domestic arguments, police invasions to spur-of-the-moment poetically ironic theatre jokes. Plus, in terms of accessibility, the documentary has built-in subtitles! Yippee!
Amidst it all, this documentary’s true splendour comes from the vulnerability of its subjects. One of the largest cultural markers from the height of COVID lockdowns was the hit taken to creative industries. Theatres, cinemas, bookshops, and spaces for arts, crafts, and new work alike became confined to the home. To this day, the creative industry in Australia is still reeling from the impact, what with the beloved indie theatre La Mama closing for 2025 and artists of all disciplines continuing to rightfully call for more funding. And even with these challenges, and the limitations of the COVID era, art persists. “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” are nothing compared to the sea of troubles that comes from making art in a world that is on the surface increasingly hostile to it. Creatives are constantly pushed to justify their abilities, their life choices, their fact of BEING creative within the futility of the capitalist age. Even with the escapist aim of making their digital Hamlet, the lockdown fears of the actors follow them. Playful car chases turn to solemn discussions about the future of their careers, the literal musing over “to be or not to be…by opposing” the question to end it all, and the need for human connection. The pathos of their real-life relationships clashes with the madness of their passion project. Paired with the closeness of the GTA player screen, I felt as if I was trespassing. The intrusive, raw quality of these moments brought the documentary forward.
As Farrago’s resident Shakespeare nerd, it’s only natural that I segue into the theatrical side of things. Hamlet is often viewed as the seminal Shakespearean text. The juxtaposition of the violence and beauty mimics HAMLET itself, one of the highest death counts in Shakespeare. The landscape of the ultra-capitalist Los Santos with the pure aim of getting everything you want, pairs well with the questions of masculinity that arise from the text itself, the feeling where “violence is the only answer.” Akin to how the violence of Hamlet is supplemented with the beauty of the language, amidst the game’s violence we find beauty, the beauty of the world itself and the beauty of the connections Crane, Grylls, and Oosterveen make. Cast and crew alike find joy beyond the pandemic in this peculiar online space. In particular, the cross-lingual relationship with player ParTeb, a Tunisian-Finnish prospective actor who becomes the team’s official bodyguard. The performance goes off on July 4th 2022 with several hitches that end up complementing the production. Upon its conclusion, they all shoot each other in celebration and then go dance at a nightclub.
To a certain extent this documentary is the closest you can get to a big-budget, high-octane Hamlet, “it’s like Shakespeare on a billion-dollar budget” says one of the actors. Beyond the inevitable “we got this before GTA6” and “it’s what Shakespeare would have wanted” quips (the former I used intentionally as a title, don’t bag at me, and the latter of which to be fair is expressed verbatim in the film), Grand Theft Hamlet is both a vulnerable snapshot of the state of the arts and a sincere meditation on how wherever you are in the world, real or digital, there are theatre kids ready to cause havoc.
GRAND THEFT HAMLET will screen as a part of the 72nd edition of the Melbourne International Film Festival on the 10th and 14th of August.