Week G: Grand Theft Hamlet (2024)
(Ssh this isn't a week late don't worry about it)
Hey no hang on where’s the recording of the full performance? No seriously I want to see the full performance WHERE IS IT
Is it good? Mmmmmm… as a documentary, I don’t know. The recreations of some of the conversations and controversies between Sam, Pinny and Mark are extremely wooden in the voice acting, which is odd given that 2/3 of those are professional actors. Not great without a script, maybe? The argument between Sam and Pinny especially is obtrusively trite and boring, and that kind of rote “you care more about your job than your family” drama is not the INTERESTING drama here, the INTERESTING drama is the way complete randos in a hyper-violent open-world MMO interact with coming across characters performing Hamlet. You do get a glimpse of a broad spectrum of online behaviour—people shooting at/blowing up the actors just ‘cause, a guy walking up to watch and then calling Sam a bitch, ParTeb not really getting it because English is like his third language and he doesn’t know Shakespeare but giving a beautiful reading from the Qu’ran in Arabic and then hanging out just for the joy of hanging and running defence… Like legit I want to see more of how their rehearsals went and how often they had to fight off other GTA gamers! And I wanted to see more of the final performance! They went through a lot of work to put together what looks like an extremely creative performance and we hardly get to see any of it! The cinematography of how GTA Online looks is definitely gorgeous, I really enjoy how much calm beauty they found in a setting designed for explosions and violence, and they got some phenomenal performers, especially the woman who did a speech from Coriolanus for her audition and fuckin killed it, especially using knife emotes as body langauge. I also would’ve loved to see interviews or something with the other performers, because Sam and Mark mention that they’re thinking of Hamlet because of how violent it is and how it goes in a setting built for violence, and then that isn’t really explored in any way.
Is it funny? Extremely. Their first attempt at doing the two-man show is broken up by gunfire and explosions at hilariously appropriate times, and there’s just so much silliness possible in the game—ParTeb’s alien costume with the tight ass, Sam and Mark having calm and thoughtful conversations while fleeing the police, the way the performers will draw guns (or in one memorable case an RPG) and just straight up kill each other ingame, something you notably cannot do onstage. Also very funny to me that, while other player characters do disrupt the rehearsals and the performance, their biggest disruption actually seems to be the ingame police responding to everything with massively over-the-top violence.
Is it queer? Nope.
Have you seen Grand Theft Hamlet? What did you think? Do you know where to get a recording of the full performance? If you’re struggling under a giant to-watch list, watch something beginning with G and tell me about it!