Grand Theft Hamlet is at its best in the moments of pure mayhem

It’s only January, but the eccentric, ambitious documentary Grand Theft Hamlet will surely end up as one of 2025’s most interesting movies. During England’s second lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, two unemployed actors who had been spending their time in Grand Theft Auto Online decided to stage a production of Hamlet within the confines of the game’s virtual world. Their performance of the play (dubbed GTA Hamlet) was presented strictly using the vast virtual cityscape of Los Santos, with their in-game avatars as actors.

Grand Theft Hamlet tells the story of the duo’s one-of-a-kind production, showing the virtual avatars of the actors as they attempt to pull together something that seems impossible. What emerges is a portrait of a virtual theater company constantly (and occasionally literally) going to battle to mount their production amid the pure pandemonium that is GTA Online.

Grand Theft Hamlet is an ambitious documentary that hinges on capturing the thorny IRL moments of putting on a play in the virtual world of GTA Online. It doesn’t always work: some moments feel scripted. (The filmmakers told Polygon that while they did not stage any of the drama, they did re-record lines of dialogue to clean up the audio.) Ultimately, the creators tried to control a finished product that was never going to be in control, instead of fully embracing the mayhem the form afforded them. But when it’s on, Grand Theft Hamlet feels like a shot of lightning, with the best moments being the completely unexpected ones, as the chaos of the world repeatedly interferes with their attempts to rehearse and mount the virtual production.

Just take a look at the most popular reviews of the movie on Letterboxd: They are absolutely littered with love for ParTeb, a side participant who injected pure chaos into the production. ParTeb was not one of the many actors recruited by creators Sam Crane, Pinny Grylls, and Mark Oosterveen to join their production of Hamlet. ParTeb was a random passerby wearing a ridiculous alien outfit. First introduced as a curious spectator, ParTeb becomes the doc’s comedic lifeblood.

In one of Grand Theft Hamlet’s highlights, after rehearsals of the planned production have been halted multiple times by in-game random gunfire and police activity, ParTeb receives an informal promotion to Chief of Security for the virtual theater company, providing lethal protection from his VTOL jet in the skies. The juxtaposition of the scrappy theater company trying to pull together a production with a massive military fighter jet hovering above them is exactly what makes GTA Hamlet special.

ParTeb’s involvement and the troupe’s other random encounters with GTAO players helps make the ambitious effort truly feel like live theater, complete with the risky elements of chance: Anything can happen during a live performance, including audience interference. When ParTeb offers to audition “with my [virtual green alien] butt,” only to get on stage and beautifully recite a portion of the Quran, the sheer surprise at the unexpected turn of events makes the moment truly magical.

Spontaneity is the key to GTA Hamlet’s success as a theatrical production, as it is for any of the other countless GTA Online role players attempting to make their virtual dreams come true inside a chaotic game. Some people play the game without committing crimes. Others roleplay as high school students. Some people play as an assassin-for-hire, while others pretend to be cops. All of them have to navigate the essential tension between their individual goals, what the game was actually designed for, and the goals of every other player around them.

This same tension arose when Past Lives director Celine Song attempted to mount a production of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull in The Sims 4. Polygon’s Nicole Carpenter noted how that provided a challenge to the production, but also added extra elements of humor and surprising profundity, just like in GTA Hamlet:

Sims, of course, operate with “free will,” meaning that if they have a different need to be fulfilled — say, they’re hungry or need to pee — they’ll do that, rather than what they’re commanded to do by the player.

That makes creating a live production, where the Sims (as actors) should follow the player’s every move, much more chaotic. But it also helps reimagine this classic text in a way that’s both profound and hilarious.

Spontaneous action isn’t the only place where GTA Hamlet gains strength from its form. When the climax occurs and characters start dying left and right, GTA Online’s kill feed dutifully reports each death. (Spoiler alert for a more than 400-year-old-play, I guess.) “Queen_Gertrude has chosen the easy way out.” “Hamlet_thedane killed King_Claudius.” “Hamlet_thedane has chosen the easy way out.” In these moments, Grand Theft Hamlet best connects the vast distance between the history of live theater and the new medium it’s been pulled into.

Hamlet has been performed untold numbers of times, in untold numbers of ways, but never quite like this before. It’s a thrilling reminder that there are always new ways to re-imagine our oldest and most enduring stories. It makes Grand Theft Hamlet an exciting entry in a new wave of movies and theater productions taking advantage of the spontaneity of video game worlds as a potential location for narrative action. The documentary is also a helpful reminder to artists working in (not-so) new and difficult forms that sometimes, the chaos is the point.

Grand Theft Hamlet is currently in theaters.