Grand Theft Hamlet is at its best in the moments of pure mayhem

It’s solely January, however the eccentric, bold documentary Grand Theft Hamlet will certainly find yourself as one in all 2025’s most fascinating films. Throughout England’s second lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, two unemployed actors who had been spending their time in Grand Theft Auto Online determined to stage a manufacturing of Hamlet inside the confines of the sport’s digital world. Their efficiency of the play (dubbed GTA Hamlet) was offered strictly utilizing the huge digital cityscape of Los Santos, with their in-game avatars as actors.

Grand Theft Hamlet tells the story of the duo’s one-of-a-kind manufacturing, exhibiting the digital avatars of the actors as they try to tug collectively one thing that appears unattainable. What emerges is a portrait of a digital theater firm continually (and infrequently actually) going to battle to mount their manufacturing amid the pure pandemonium that’s GTA On-line.

Grand Theft Hamlet is an bold documentary that hinges on capturing the thorny IRL moments of placing on a play within the digital world of GTA On-line. It doesn’t at all times work: some moments really feel scripted. (The filmmakers told Polygon that whereas they didn’t stage any of the drama, they did re-record traces of dialogue to scrub up the audio.) In the end, the creators tried to regulate a completed product that was by no means going to be in management, as a substitute of totally embracing the mayhem the shape afforded them. However when it’s on, Grand Theft Hamlet looks like a shot of lightning, with one of the best moments being the utterly surprising ones, because the chaos of the world repeatedly interferes with their makes an attempt to rehearse and mount the digital manufacturing.

Simply check out the most popular reviews of the movie on Letterboxd: They’re completely plagued by love for ParTeb, a aspect participant who injected pure chaos into the manufacturing. ParTeb was not one of many many actors recruited by creators Sam Crane, Pinny Grylls, and Mark Oosterveen to affix their manufacturing of Hamlet. ParTeb was a random passerby sporting a ridiculous alien outfit. First launched as a curious spectator, ParTeb turns into the doc’s comedic lifeblood.

In one in all Grand Theft Hamlet’s highlights, after rehearsals of the deliberate manufacturing have been halted a number of instances by in-game random gunfire and police exercise, ParTeb receives a casual promotion to Chief of Safety for the digital theater firm, offering deadly safety from his VTOL jet within the skies. The juxtaposition of the scrappy theater firm making an attempt to tug collectively a manufacturing with an enormous navy fighter jet hovering above them is precisely what makes GTA Hamlet particular.

ParTeb’s involvement and the troupe’s different random encounters with GTAO gamers helps make the bold effort really really feel like reside theater, full with the dangerous parts of probability: Something can occur throughout a reside efficiency, together with viewers interference. When ParTeb gives to audition “with my [virtual green alien] butt,” solely to get on stage and superbly recite a portion of the Quran, the sheer shock on the surprising flip of occasions makes the second really magical.

Spontaneity is the important thing to GTA Hamlet’s success as a theatrical manufacturing, as it’s for any of the opposite numerous GTA On-line function gamers trying to make their digital desires come true inside a chaotic recreation. Some individuals play the sport without committing crimes. Others roleplay as high school students. Some individuals play as an assassin-for-hire, whereas others pretend to be cops. All of them must navigate the important pressure between their particular person targets, what the sport was truly designed for, and the targets of each different participant round them.

This identical pressure arose when Past Lives director Celine Song tried to mount a manufacturing of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull in The Sims 4. Polygon’s Nicole Carpenter famous how that provided a challenge to the production, but additionally added additional parts of humor and shocking profundity, similar to in GTA Hamlet:

Sims, after all, function with “free will,” that means that if they’ve a unique should be fulfilled — say, they’re hungry or must pee — they’ll do this, somewhat than what they’re commanded to do by the participant.

That makes making a reside manufacturing, the place the Sims (as actors) ought to observe the participant’s each transfer, way more chaotic. But it surely additionally helps reimagine this basic textual content in a approach that’s each profound and hilarious.

Spontaneous motion isn’t the one place the place GTA Hamlet beneficial properties energy from its type. When the climax happens and characters begin dying left and proper, GTA On-line’s kill feed dutifully studies every loss of life. (Spoiler alert for a greater than 400-year-old-play, I suppose.) “Queen_Gertrude has chosen the simple approach out.” “Hamlet_thedane killed King_Claudius.” “Hamlet_thedane has chosen the simple approach out.” In these moments, Grand Theft Hamlet finest connects the huge distance between the historical past of reside theater and the brand new medium it’s been pulled into.

Hamlet has been carried out untold numbers of instances, in untold numbers of how, however by no means fairly like this earlier than. It’s an exciting reminder that there are at all times new methods to re-imagine our oldest and most enduring tales. It makes Grand Theft Hamlet an thrilling entry in a new wave of movies and theater productions benefiting from the spontaneity of online game worlds as a possible location for narrative motion. The documentary can be a useful reminder to artists working in (not-so) new and troublesome types that typically, the chaos is the purpose.

Grand Theft Hamlet is presently in theaters.