Bearing all the fardels.
Someone clever once referred to The Anatomy of Melancholy as a novel in which all the characters are books.
Grand Theft Hamlet is a documentary about an attempt to stage Hamlet insideGTA Online.
Actually, due to that peculiar cocktail of lockdown experiences, Sam and Mark seem simultaneously boredanddepressedandon edge.
In other words, they’re perfectly primed to do something inadvisable.
They quickly decide that they’re going to put on a play - and not just any play.
Hamlet seems like the perfect fit for Rockstar’s world.
Sam’s partner Pinny is a documentary film-maker and quickly comes in to document what happens next.
But those famous lines!
But then you get a deep cut.
“Who would fardels bear?”
To think of it!
I have not laughed about fardels in decades.
It’s like finding that someone built a clown college around the corner from the Chrysler Building.
Out the door, turn left at the mixed metaphor and get ready to pick up your tiny bicycle.
And that sense of newness is not limited to Shakespeare.
And then: “It’s like starting a relationship with you again.”
“I felt it was thrilling,” she says.
“It was quite a difficult time in history, wasn’t it?
We were all feeling pretty depressed.
We were probably spending too much time together because we were locked in.
It felt very young.
And I had fun.”
The game is everywhere in the film Grylls and Crane have made.
A gunfight breaks out while Sam and Mark are trying to film a recruitment video.
I ask Crane how he ended up viewing the production’s relationship with the game.
“It’s a live setting,” he laughs.
You’re genuinely co-present in this space with other people at the same time.
Crane sees the temperamental environment of GTA Online as crucial to the success of the play.
He sees a sense of potential disaster as being a crucial component of theatre in general.
“Without that [stuff] you don’t have drama,” he says.
It’s this same tension that thrilled Grylls.
“That’s why it’s so exciting to make a documentary about it,” she says.
And then how can we tell a story about what happened?
And what did we learn from it?"
She looks towards Crane.
There they are, the actor and the documentary film-maker.
“I felt we suddenly understood each other’s passions, and that they were actually quite similar.”
You make something brilliant, and once it’s been performed, it’s pretty much disappeared.
It’s in the ether.
You had to be there.
And then Grylls mentions a version of The Seagull performed by Celine Song in The Sims in 2020.
So are there other people doing this sort of thing?
The Sims is a game, but it’s not a live service game.
It comes with light movie making tools and with none of the randomness of GTA Online.
“There was jeopardy,” Grylls says.
“And I think that makes it so interesting.”
(Just me?)
And the game itself only complicated that.
“It’s a very interior scene,” Crane says.
“It’s inside the closet, right?
It’s inside Gertrude’s bedroom.”
But when you’re inside a building in GTA Online, you might’t use your weapon.
“So anyway, shit, what do we do?”
Polonius is behind the arras and Hamlet kills him.
A couple of things have really stayed with me about this version of Hamlet.
One of them is the performances.
Even the auditions are thrilling.
Crane was dazzled too.
Another thing that’s stayed with me is the film’s balance between these two titans of culture.
You know, William Shakespeare and Grand Theft Auto.
Both come through clearly in the film, and both express themselves in their own ways.
GTA’s personality emerges just as clearly as Shakespeare’s.
Its presence is just as distinct and astonishing.
But there’s something else in this film - something that elevates Grand Theft Hamlet in every way.
Early on, in-game Pinny asks in-game Mark how he’s doing.
He’s been to a funeral and he mentions that he’s just lost his last blood relative.
I gasped while watching, even though I was entirely alone at the time.
Grand Theft Hamlet’s about Shakespeare and about GTA, but really it’s about this vital human stuff.
“[At screenings,] I’ve actually asked the audience,” Grylls says.
“I’ve said, okay, how many people came here because they’re gamers?
How many people came here because they’re Shakespeare fans?
And most of them put their hands up.
In fact, everyone puts their hands up in that one.
You’re going to enjoy yourself.
It’s going to be fun.
And then we swerve into a different zone.
“This film is not just about having fun,” Gyrlls continues.
“It’s about people’s lives.
It’s real things that people can relate to.
In turn, all of that sounds kind of… Shakespearian?
“I think it’s interesting,” Crane says.
And we really wanted that, to allow that to happen.
There’s all these different layers of reality, of what the story of Hamlet is about.
There’s medieval Denmark through the lens of Shakespeare telling the story in Shakespearian England.
And then we’re inside this game that was actually made in 2013 originally.
“And then we’re playing it in England in 2021,” Crane says.
“In the sort of aftermath of this terrible pandemic.
“And Hamlet’s about that, right?”
“I mean, Hamlet’s about people wearing masks, people not being what they seem.”
“It’s the play within the play.”
Grand Theft Hamlet is out in UK cinemas on 6th December.
