Grand Theft Ham­let review – all the world’s a stage

Whether through iso­la­tion, finan­cial uncer­tain­ty, grief or trep­i­da­tion over whether life would ever feel the same, the pan­dem­ic did a num­ber on all of us. For many artists, there was the added chal­lenge of los­ing access to the resources need­ed to make new work, but for some, see­ing through their sud­den and ran­dom bouts of cre­ativ­i­ty became some­what a neces­si­ty. This was the case for Sam Crane and Mark Oost­er­veen, two out-of-work actors who, dur­ing the UK’s third lock­down, decid­ed to mount a pro­duc­tion of Shakespeare’s Ham­let entire­ly with­in the vir­tu­al world of Grand Theft Auto Online.

We fol­low Crane and Oosterveen’s avatars who are joined by Crane’s wife, film­mak­er Pin­ny Grylls, her avatar doc­u­ment­ing their pur­suit with an in-game phone cam­era. There is much to enjoy in the anar­chy of this film, the unsus­pect­ing play­ers that show up to audi­tion while dodg­ing the bul­lets com­ing at them from all direc­tions, and the moments of earnest con­nec­tion and serendip­i­ty borne out of band­ing togeth­er to pull this crazy thing off.

The film’s spon­ta­neous spir­it is mud­died by a sense that some ideas are retroac­tive­ly staged (like when Crane and Grylls, who live togeth­er, have an in-game domes­tic over how this project is tak­ing over life com­mit­ments), but what ulti­mate­ly stays with you is the actor duo’s com­mend­able abil­i­ty to find inspi­ra­tion and poet­ic grav­i­tas in silli­ness, horse­play and tom­fool­ery, even (and espe­cial­ly) in the dark­est of times.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.