“Grand Theft Hamlet is too busy pitting high art against low art to take advantage of the communal power shared by games and theater.”
Pros
Wonderful supporting solid
In-game photographs really feel pure
Communal energy of theater and video games
Cons
Lacks focus
Not sufficient of the particular play
High vs. low artwork debate
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Anyone can act
Reality and fiction mix
Lack of intent
All the world’s a stage
There is a cause the performs of William Shakespeare proceed to carry such cultural forex over 400 years after the author’s demise. His tales — stretched throughout histories, comedies, and tragedies — are achingly relatable portrayals of the human expertise in all its sides. It is why Romeo and Juliet can work as a musical in 50’s New York or Macbeth will be transported to feudal Japan. Shakespeare is timeless. So who’s to say it wouldn’t work within a online game?
That’s precisely the premise of Grand Theft Hamlet, a documentary that chronicles two actors’ tumultuous try through the Covid-19 pandemic to stage the bard’s well-known tragedy fully inside Rockstar’s multiplayer sandbox, Grand Theft Auto Online. Staging the existential story within the midst of a pandemic when the way forward for stay theater is unsure is a compelling hook, however this battle is rarely given sufficient display screen time over the course of the documentary’s brisk 91 minute runtime
Grand Theft Hamlet bounces between grand philosophizing about life (Hamlet could be proud) and alluring the viewers to snort at simply how wacky video video games will be compared to the excessive artwork of theater. What will get misplaced in between are the human moments that make evident the common need for group that each theater and on-line gaming can present.
Anyone can act
The opening of Grand Theft Hamlet sees out of labor actors Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen in the course of a session of Grand Theft Auto Online. While fleeing from the cops — the whole documentary is shot in-game — the 2 bump into the Vinewood Bowl, a big open-air amphitheater. After reciting some monologues and leaping round, an thought kinds: What if the duo staged a stay manufacturing of Hamlet right here? It’s not like the 2, caught at dwelling throughout UK lockdown’s in 2021, are doing some other performing. But the logistics of such an endeavor quickly result in plenty of problems.
GRAND THEFT HAMLET | Official Trailer | Coming Soon
The first hurdle is rounding up a solid. A full manufacturing of Hamlet requires round two dozen performers when one with out some individuals doubling up on roles. When their first makes an attempt at bringing random gamers into the fold go array, together with a number of over-the-top deaths by the hands of potential auditionees, Crane and Oosterveen put out the decision on-line. This garners far more success, as a handful of hopefuls present as much as reply the decision.
The auditions are the primary nice second of Grand Theft Hamlet. In brief interviews we study concerning the motley crew that may change into our solid. There is an expert voice actor (Overwatch’s Jen Cohn) but in addition full-time dad and mom, real-life associates of Crane and Oosterveen, and a literary agent that has commandeered her nephew’s account to satisfy a long-held dream of performing. Some performers gown for the half and others time slashes of knives to the climactic moments of their monologue. Watching the in-game fashions awkwardly gesticulate and emote to the phrases of Shakespeare (as heard over fuzzy voice chat) is jarring at first however quickly feels pure because the timeless prose takes middle stage. Maybe this wild thought simply would possibly work.
Even these poignant moments include the drawbacks of being in a lawless public discussion board like Grand Theft Auto. Weapons go off, actors unintentionally kill one another midline, and finally the cops present as much as destroy all of it. This is the most important juxtaposition Grand Theft Hamlet continuously leans into. A gathering of excessive and low artwork, and the way comedic it’s to see actors get blown to excessive heaven. Crane and Oosterveen declare early on that this replicates a real Shakespeare expertise in some ways. The materials of Hamlet itself is extremely violent, one thing that the world of Grand Theft Auto Online supplies in spades. Yet the digicam of Grand Theft Hamlet by no means imbues the unpredictable violence of Los Santos with something however humor. “Isn’t this funny” it appears to ask the viewer each single time an unintended demise happens, of which there are numerous. It takes away from Oosterveen and Crane’s claims about this replicating the unique expertise of seeing Hamlet at The Old Globe, and it frames it as a distinction between critical (theater) and unserious (video video games) artwork kinds.
Reality and fiction mix
There is one thing to be stated for a way the limitless parade of demise in Grand Theft Hamlet extra aptly speaks to the expertise felt through the Covid-19 pandemic. Crane and Oosterveen, and the solid they’ve assembled, are doing their greatest to create one thing within the shadow of unimaginable loss. Between rehearsals for the play, we see the actual world bleed into Grand Theft Auto Online. In a solemn second between Oosterveen and Pinny Grylls (co-director of the documentary, supply of the vast majority of in-game footage, and Crane’s spouse) that he just lately attended the funeral of his final blood relative. In this second he’s digitally current with Grylls, however within the real-world he’s alone in his condo whereas additionally being alone in a way more existential definition. It is heartbreaking.
Mubi
These moments of actuality typically trigger simply as a lot disruption to the manufacturing of Hamlet as any of the unpredictable mayhem of Grand Theft Auto Online. In a low-point for Crane and Oosterveen, their Hamlet breaks the information that he has gotten a job and should quiet the manufacturing since he now not has the time. Crane and Oosterveen, standing in a subway station continuously buzzing with arriving and departing trains, break down in an argument. Maybe this manufacturing is silly, perhaps it has no function. It results in a feud between the duo. And what ought to really feel as actual as the opposite poignant moments of Grand Theft Hamlet solely reveals one of many documentary’s obtrusive flaws: Much just like the play they’re trying to carry out, all of it feels rehearsed.
Crane and Oosterveen are actors, and you’ll really feel them punching up their dialogue in these moments concerning the “real-world.” While the work of Shakespeare helps to interrupt down the uncanny valley of the digital world, these scenes do the other. They pull me again to the auditions through which gamers rigorously ready their emotes and actions to replicate their phrases. To sync motion and voice on this on-line house takes preparation, that means when Crane angrily punches the air or avoids “looking” at Oosterveen by getting a drink from a merchandising machine it reads as far too choreographed, with on the nostril dialogue. Maybe these fights between the 2 and existential outbursts did occur, however what we see in Grand Theft Hamlet comes throughout as a theatrical retelling that lacks emotional rawness. The two typically go for a tone that clearly is supposed to reflect the melodrama of Hamlet, when their circumstances actually really feel extra akin to the meandering and sometimes comedic existentialism of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
Lack of intent
But the play’s the factor, so simply how does the solid’s many hours of rehearsal repay? In all honesty, Grand Theft Hamlet doesn’t appear very excited about exhibiting you precisely the way it all shake’s out. The few tidbits of the incoherent stay efficiency we do see close to the documentary’s finish are full of bazookas, sports activities vehicles, and even a blimp flying by means of the sky. Crane and Oosterveen lean into the spectacle Los Santos affords with out eager about the way it deepens their tackle Hamlet
Mubi
As for the performances, most of them are pretty weak. Though I’m not truly mad about that. Outside of Crane, Oosterveen, and Cohn, no person within the solid is an expert actor. Rather than the Royal Shakespeare Company this manufacturing is extra like seeing your local people theater’s model of Hamlet. Which is nice! For most of those individuals, placing on a Tony worthy efficiency isn’t an important factor, it’s concerning the friendship that this journey has given them. It speaks to the significance of theater as a instrument for constructing group, one thing that it shares with on-line video games. Especially in a world pandemic that made all of us extra lonely than we had ever been, Grand Theft Auto Online stands in for all the web areas that allowed for individuals to spend time collectively.
That doesn’t appear to be the takeaway for Crane and Oosterveen nonetheless. With Hamlet efficiently carried out in sport and lockdown’s being lifted the 2 sit up for life again within the real-world, at which level their inventive and communal adventures inside Grand Theft Auto Online will probably come to an finish. It reads nearly as a reminder to get outdoors and contact grass. Much of Grand Theft Hamlet seems like this, with Crane and Oosterveen performing as momentary guests to on-line digital areas solely out of necessity. As a side-effect of the movie focusing extra on the duo because it goes on, we additionally get much less and fewer of these compelling human tales that the solid convey to the desk.
All the world’s a stage
This is maybe my best frustration with Grand Theft Hamlet. Theater and video video games are such inventive siblings of their interactivity and group, however these connective threads aren’t overtly acknowledged by Crane and Oosterveen. Much like different initiatives from non-gaming individuals wading into this world, the entire premise additionally comes from an uninformed place of self-aggrandizement. The duo continuously discuss concerning the accomplishment of performing Shakespeare in Grand Theft Auto Online as having by no means been executed earlier than. That could be true of Grand Theft Auto Online, nevertheless it isn’t true of video video games at massive.
Mubi
Dedicated theater troupes in Final Fantasy 14 have been placing on theatrical performances to full-houses for years — I attended one in 2020 — together with productions of Shakespeare. Also in 2020, Celine Song (author and director of Past Lives) mounted a manufacturing of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull fully in The Sims 4 that expertly put the 2 mediums right into a dialog concerning the ephemeral nature of tales instructed inside each. Furthermore, Crane and Oosterveen ignore the thriving roleplaying scene that Grand Theft Auto Online has nurtured since its launch. It won’t be Shakespeare, nevertheless it requires the identical communal effort from a devoted group of gamers eager to make one thing of their very own throughout the sandbox.
Crane and Oosterveen continuously appear to consider that resulting from their theatrical background they’re bringing an inheritor of seriousness to what they see as a foolish world. To quote the bard, the 2 see Grand Theft Auto Online as “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” In the tip it leaves Grand Theft Hamlet feeling a lot the identical.
Grand Theft Hamlet might be out there to stream by way of MUBI on February 21.