Grand Theft Hamlet review: something rotten

digitaltrends.com:

Grand Theft Hamlet Score Details Pros

• Wonderful supporting cast
• In-game shots feel natural
• Communal power of theater and games

• Lacks focus
• Not enough of the actual play
• High vs. low art debate

There is a reason the plays of William Shakespeare continue to hold such cultural currency over 400 years after the writer’s death. His stories — stretched across histories, comedies, and tragedies — are achingly relatable portrayals of the human experience in all its facets. It is why Romeo and Juliet can work as a musical in 50’s New York or Macbeth can be transported to feudal Japan. Shakespeare is timeless. So who’s to say it wouldn’t work inside of a video game?

That’s exactly the premise of Grand Theft Hamlet, a documentary that chronicles two actors’ tumultuous attempt during the Covid-19 pandemic to stage the bard’s famous tragedy entirely within Rockstar’s multiplayer sandbox,Grand Theft Auto Online. Staging the existential story in the midst of a pandemic when the future of live theater is uncertain is a compelling hook, but this struggle is never given enough screen time over the course of the documentary’s brisk 91 minute runtime

Grand Theft Hamlet bounces between grand philosophizing about life (Hamlet would be proud) and inviting the audience to laugh at just how wacky video games can be in comparison to the high art of theater. What gets lost in between are the human moments that make evident the universal desire for community that both theater and online gaming can provide.

Anyone can act

The opening of Grand Theft Hamlet sees out of work actors Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen in the middle of a session of Grand Theft Auto Online. While fleeing from the cops — the entire documentary is shot in-game — the two stumble upon the Vinewood Bowl, a large open-air amphitheater. After reciting some monologues and jumping around, an idea