“You can’t stop the production just because somebody dies,” director Pinny Grylls says towards the climax of this documentary. To be fair, the body count surrounding her award-winning production of Hamlet is exceptionally high. Actors Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen create a version of Shakespeare’s Dane within the world of Grand Theft Auto and all the footage is taken from the hit game series using machinima techniques that create skits and movies using video gameplay. But Grand Theft Hamlet transcends machinima, starting during lockdown as Crane and Oosterveen spend their days drifting and killing in the astonishingly beautiful GTA world before deciding to stage Shakespeare’s play. The game’s extreme violence is ever present – an actor is bazooka’d during an audition, rehearsals are assaulted, and all the while the players deal with real work loneliness and feelings of futility. By turns hilarious, moving and deeply weird, the combination of violent death and existential despair frames the final, very odd performance and desolate aftermath perfectly.
