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

A production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in online world of Grand Theft Auto became these two actors’ answer to the pandemic’s enforced lockdowns.

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.

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Published 4 Dec 2024

Tags: Grand Theft Hamlet