“To be or not to be, that is the question.” The Shakespeare quote, from Hamlet, was not a reference to whether or not someone could pull off creating an entire theatrical performance within the world of a video game. And yet, in 2022, that’s exactly what happened. The documentary Grand Theft Hamlet, directed by Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls, tells the incredible true story of how a group of actors banded together to perform Hamlet in the world of Grand Theft Auto Online. This is how Grand Theft Hamlet came to be.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
In 2020, British actor Sam Crane was poised to take the next step in his career when he was cast as Harry Potter in the hugely successful Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on London’s West End. Just a week of rehearsals was underway when the COVID pandemic took over in March 2020—and the job was gone before he appeared on stage.
Crane, who had previously appeared in episodes of The Crown, Endeavour, and Poldark, was looking for ways to fill the endless hours of lockdown. His friend, fellow out-of-work actor Mark Oosterveen, had been playing Grand Theft Auto Online, a game that took the extremely popular GTA franchise online in a vast multiplayer world. The two began playing together, connecting through the game while being unable to do so in person. GTA Online offered a striking sense of infinite possibilities: you could shoot anyone you liked; rob banks; race cars; fly jetplanes; buy new clothes—if you could dream it, you could do it. When the pair stumbled upon a giant open air theater in the game (the Vinewood Bowl), they put that theory to the test.
Hoping to keep their acting talents fresh and to continue doing the thing they loved, they made an unlikely plan: They would perform a Shakespeare play—specifically, the very violent Hamlet—in its entirety, inside the world of GTA Online. That may sound ridiculous, but there’s a fascinating correlation between Shakespeare and gaming. William Shakespeare, who, while presently revered, wasn’t nearly as respected in his time, with plays full of sexual innuendos, shocking violence, and foul language. The medium of theatre as a whole was considered meager popular, low-brow entertainment. Gaming is also widely looked down upon (critic Roger Ebert famously declared video games can never be art) as cheap, hyperviolent, and mindless entertainment today. But video games are an evolving art form where limits are constantly pushed.
“It’s very free and alive,” Crane said of GTA Online at a screening of the film in London as part of the London Film Festival. Co-director Pinny Grylls, who is married to Crane, added: “It was that liveliness that brought us to this project.” Grylls, who had never played video games before GTA Online, was particularly struck by how cinematic it felt, leading her to join the production. That translates remarkably well to the documentary: Grand Theft Hamlet is filmed entirely within the world of the video game, using footage that Grylls recorded as they produced the play, and even the talking heads are game avatars. “When we all felt locked in, being able to go into the landscape and explore was amazing,” Grylls said. And that sense of exploration was essential to their impressive achievements.
So too does the knowledge that performing Shakespeare in a game best known for violent crime is patently absurd. “Do you think that doing a production of Hamlet inside GTA is achievable?” asks Grylls in Grand Theft Hamlet. “I think it’s a terrible idea, but I definitely think we should try and do it,” responds Oosterveen. It began with trying to recruit other players to join the fray. The trio filmed an amusing recruitment video in-game, asking people to join their production. The video was posted on social media, and amazingly, people actually responded. Some were actors looking for something to do (including Jen Cohn, a voice actor in Overwatch and Grand Theft Auto V) and others were curious about performing Shakespeare for the first time.
It wasn’t easy: the documentary reveals there was also tension between the friends over whether they’d really be able to pull it off, and if it was even worth it. In 2022, work opportunities were opening up again. Various cast members weren’t able to rehearse at the same frequency as some began to re-enter the work force, with others dropping out or switching to smaller roles to ensure the show could go on. Scheduling became an even bigger challenge than constantly being shot at in the game while trying to practice the play. Oosterveen had also lost a family member during the pandemic, and felt particularly isolated, while Crane and Grylls had family responsibilities of their own, including two children. Despite the difficulties, the determination remained between Crane, Grylls, Oosterveen, and the rest of the cast.
After months of rehearsals and unpredictable shifts, they were finally ready to perform on July 22, 2022. Thanks to the game’s features, it looked “almost like a billion dollar production of Hamlet,” a cast member jokes in the doc. The spectacle is indeed remarkable, from jetplanes to scenes performed on luxurious skyscrapers.
Perhaps what set it apart the most from staged and filmed versions of the play was that other GTA players did not mind killing the actors while they were performing. “Other players kept killing him before he finished his soliloquies—but wouldn’t Shakespeare have loved that?” asked Lotte Jeffs in his review of the production for the London Evening Standard. Indeed, that unpredictability made it feel almost like it was being at Shakespeare’s Globe 500 years ago, with an electric atmosphere opposed to the very polite and strict theatre etiquette that is now commonplace.
The play lasted just over two hours and 50 minutes (including time for the countless cast members who got killed by other players throughout) and garnered nearly 5 thousand viewers in the first three weeks on YouTube. While the video was previously available on YouTube on Crane’s channel Rustic Mascara, the full play, along with various clips of the performance, have since been removed.
For Crane, who reclaimed his role as Harry Potter on the West End in October 2022, the experience of performing Hamlet in Grand Theft Auto Online was a lesson in perseverance. “In the game you get shot and people constantly bombard you, but the amazing thing is you respawn and go again,” he said at the London screening. “There were so many doors closed in front of us, but we just kept on going, and I think that was a lesson from playing the game.”
Leave a comment
