Grand Theft Hamlet

That’s especially true of Grand Theft Auto Online, the wildly popular, absurdly profitable extension of the long-running GTA franchise in which players can do nearly anything: steal and drive not only cars but helicopters and planes, kill other players and NPCs alike, wear outrageous outfits, gamble, swim in the ocean, rob convenience stores before leading the police on high-speed chases, buy real estate, and even stage a production of Hamlet.

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One thing you can’t do within the game’s virtual sandbox is catch COVID, hence why out-of-work actors Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen spent so much time playing together during lockdown. While walking through the game's recreation of Los Angeles, Crane found himself in the Vinewood Bowl — a nearly 1:1 recreation of the Hollywood Bowl — and had the idea to put on a play there. Shakespeare is nearly as violent as GTA, he reasoned, and it was a more fitting lockdown project for a frustrated thespian than baking sourdough. “I don’t think we can,” Mark says when asked whether they can pull it off, “but I definitely think we should try.” How much great art has been born of just such an attitude?

The result of that effort is unique not only for its premise but also for the manner of its creation. Grand Theft Hamlet, which is in theaters across the country today, was filmed entirely in-game, with Crane and his professional and romantic partner Pinny Grylls recording every stage of the process: conception, auditions, rehearsals, and finally the performance itself. Casting the ensemble proved an especially dicey prospect, as GTA Online is a Wild West in which most player interactions rarely extend beyond violence. The first person they approached killed them without a second thought; the second exited the game after hearing Macbeth’s “out, out, brief candle” monologue. To say that this virtual world is not known for its friendliness would be such an understatement as to rival Mercutio describing his fatal wound as “a scratch, a scratch.”

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After first conceiving of the idea in January of 2021, they worked on it in one way or another until finally performing Hamlet on July 4, 2022 — a year and a half of DIY struggle that Crane and Grylls wistfully portray as an ode to the creative process and the necessity of art in challenging times. The players who join the endeavor are a motley crew straight out of a scripted underdog story, with one of them, a Tunisian man whose avatar dresses as an unclothed green alien, wowing the producers by reciting an excerpt from the Quran for his audition — a surprisingly moving example of what you might call emergent gameplay.

How much great art has been born of just such an attitude?

They eventually decided against staging it at the Vinewood Bowl; to do so would be to limit themselves to a tiny pocket of an open, dynamic world. They instead used all of Los Santos as their stage, beginning on the beach before moving first to a yacht, a hotel rooftop, a blimp, and the game’s verdant virtual hills. At one point, everyone in the cast died in an accident. But the show must go on, and so they hit their marks once more after respawning.

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For the climax, Crane, who had changed his player’s name to match the role he was performing, committed in-game suicide after finishing his final monologue — an action accompanied by the game’s usual onscreen text: “Hamlet_thedane has taken the easy way out.” If that isn’t an all-time-great stage direction on the level of “Exit, pursued by a bear,” I don’t know what is.