What’s on our shelves: Shakespeare in San Andreas, Heathcliff on the Moors, and Indiana Jones around the globe
Last updated on: 6th February 2025|6th February 2025 | Lauren Purton | Latest News
Film: Grand Theft Hamlet directed by Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane
A film so great we’ve WOOSHed it four times. Val, Lauren, Jake D and Jake B each attended local viewings of Grand Theft Hamlet and we had a lot to say about it:
Please don’t kill the actors…
There are many challenges to be addressed when putting on a production of any play. A director must be appointed, a suitable venue has to be located, casting decisions need to be made, schedules must be agreed, the script may need editing, marketing plans have to be developed.
Now imagine that some of the challenges you face during rehearsals and performances include the likelihood of being arrested or shot by a SWAT team, or killed by an audience member or a random passer-by. Can you even trust your (heavily armed) cast members not to turn against you?
Filmed during the UK lockdown, Grand Theft Hamlet follows two out of work actors as they attempt to stage the first ever performance of the play in the dystopian gaming landscape.
Watching this film was a surprisingly positive, if surreal, experience. It’s about finding community and like-minded people even in the middle of a violent cityscape where most people will shoot you first without asking questions. It’s about facing and fighting the isolation of lockdown and finding new ways to express and discuss emotions and personal challenges. It is also laugh out loud funny, even to a person (like me) who has never played a video game.
Val Skelton, Administrator – PTFS Europe
On the recommendation of Lauren, I went to watch Grand Theft Hamlet a few weeks ago with my brother, at the Plymouth Arts Cinema. I’ll begin the review in a moment, but I want to give big thanks to the Plymouth Arts Cinema. Local independent cinemas like this are a rarity, so to be fortunate to have one of such quality in my local area is a real pleasure.
Naturally, I thought as I attended my screening, the room is probably going to consist mostly of people in the ‘gamer’ age bracket – whatever I perhaps conned myself into thinking that was. People younger than I? Perhaps a few of a similar age. Likely mostly boys! My first surprise, therefore, was how diverse the room was. Owed perhaps to Shakespeare’s name more than Grand Theft Auto’s, the room was filled with people of all ages, genders, and world-views.
I mention this all because it perfectly sums up the docu-film, to me. On the surface, it would be easy to presume this is some crass attempt at mimicking what is arguably one of Britain’s greatest plays within an often maligned medium. A dumbing-down of great art. What is achieved is nothing of the sorts. It invoked a very human tale of loneliness during the pandemic, the determination to create something great from nothing at all, all the while generating great mirth on the part of both cast and audience, as someone in the virtual world of Grand Theft Auto stumbled upon our production team and decided it most appropriate to just… blow the lot up with a rocket launcher!
Grand Theft Hamlet follows out-of-work actors Sam Crane, Pinny Grylls, and Mark Oosterveen during the COVID-19 pandemic as they hatch a rather hare-brained idea; to recreate William Shakespeare’s Hamlet entirely in the exacting setting of Grand Theft Auto V. The idea spawned after Sam discovered a disused auditorium within the game, and proceeded to read the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy to an audience of two – whilst trying to get the two audience members to listen rather than blow each other up.
Along the way, we meet a variety of individuals who interact with the storytelling in different ways. Some become involved in the production, as out-of-work actors or crew themselves, others are not involved in the arts at all, but enjoy the process all the same. Further still are the outsiders, who decide the project is only useful as a point-scoring slaughter fest. Grim though it would otherwise sound, retelling how Hamlet is made without necessarily knowing if the crew were going to be alive in the next ten seconds within our virtual environment, and being torn two ways between wanting the team to succeed and get put down, was sadistically entertaining.
A continuous undertone of the film is the COVID-19 pandemic, which, at the time of recording, was ongoing. Sam and Mark, good friends outside the game’s universe, lead two very different lives. Sam is married to Pinny (who later becomes involved in the production) and thus has a social outlet to stave off loneliness – Mark, as we discover, does not have any such fortune. This undertone of loneliness in the modern world comes to a head around 2/3rds of the way through the film, in a verbal altercation of sorts, when Sam almost calls the whole plan off, only for Mark to firmly express his reliance on the project through COVID for companionship.
The film ends with us following the highlights from the production’s first full run. As one would expect, there were technical difficulties, a few actors didn’t show and had to be recast last minute, and the “security detail” had to fend off some Los Santos gangsters. In the end, Hamlet felt slightly overshadowed by the lives of the people we’d met along the way, their stories, and the impact this project had clearly had on them. And, you know what? I’m glad a ray of sunshine shone during that terrible time in a corner of a virtual Southern California!
Jake Deery, Junior Software Engineer – PTFS Europe
Grand Theft Hamlet was a surprisingly faithful representation of the grasping madness some of us felt in online spaces during the early part of The Great Plague of 2020. Putting significant effort into furthering truly stupid pursuits was the best that many of us could do during this period, as we learnt that nothing we were previously doing was going to be possible for several more months, and doing nothing at all for that long is not psychologically tenable. This project is a testament to the fact that meaning exists where we make it, and when we are confined to spaces like Grand Theft Auto Online, we must make meaning there too. I am a little upset we weren’t treated to the full performance though.
Jake Bateman, Linux System Administrator – PTFS Europe
My experience of GTA is limited to failing to drive Z-types on GTA2 and later attempting Highway Code-compliant driving around San Andreas, but even that is not needed to fully enjoy this film. The irl backdrop of the pandemic made this virtual Hamlet production not only possible but, in one of the creator’s cases, absolutely necessary for escaping overwhelming loneliness and employment uncertainty of the time. Despite this context, it is filled with laugh out loud in the cinema moments, including an alien running security on rehearsals, police raids, and many, many unscripted deaths. The film also poses an interesting question about what’s next for creativity online, now that the restraints of budgets, geography and physics can be eliminated?
Grand Theft Hamlet is funny, touching, tender, sad, absurd, and a highly recommended watch.
Lauren Purton, Marketing Executive – PTFS Europe
An update from Helen’s ‘To be finished’ shelf
Limitarianism: The case against extreme wealth by Ingrid Robeyns
I got to see Ingrid Robeyns talk about this book at the Edinburgh Book Festival last year and it was such as good talk, I bought this immediately afterwards. I have to admit, I had to take a break half way through because it does not hold back. I like to think of myself as being liberal and desirous of a fairer society but there are things she says and ideas she puts forward that even had me wincing, thinking, ‘that’s a bit far’. It is also rage inducing when she lays out just how unfair the world is. I would highly recommend but have a joy tonic at hand, just in case.
Small things like these by Claire Keegan
To be honest, I mainly read this because my sister-in-law was going on about it so much. It’s very short; I read it in an evening. It is beautifully written, but I did spend a lot of it wondering why we were learning of the persecution and subjugation of women by the Catholic Church in the Magdalene laundries from a male perspective.
I read two books by Elena Armas from two different series.
I’ve already read the second in the series of The Spanish Love Deception (I do this quite a lot, always by accident).
So bad. It could have been a quarter of the length if the author didn’t repeat herself so much. The male lead may as well have been a cardboard cutout. Actually, I take that back, a cardboard cutout would have been a more three dimensional character.
I have actually read the first of this series and The Fiancé Dilemma is the second.
The whole premise is utterly ridiculous but at least this one was funny and didn’t repeat itself as much. There were some decent side characters too. It would make a great Hallmark/Netflix Xmas film, which makes it either great or terrible, depending on your perspective.
Radio Silence by Alice Oseman
There are a lot of things that Alice Oseman addresses that I really love like identity, relationships and sexuality for younger people and teens. And her stories stay with me long after I’ve read them. But I don’t enjoy reading her books and I’ve realised that it’s because of what I am going to call the ‘Rebecca’ problem. When I read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier I HATED it because all I wanted to do was shake the female lead and tell her to do something, say something, anything except be the limp noodle she is. I find myself doing that same thing for the characters in Alice Oseman’s books and it’s too frustrating to allow me to enjoy them.
Helen Symington, Sales Executive – PTFS Europe
Book: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The book club I attend selected Wuthering Heights for their January meet-up. I first read the book as a teenager when studying it at school and I have appreciated revisiting it 15+ years later. January’s moody weather made for a fitting backdrop to rove the Yorkshire Moors with Cathy and Heathcliff. Brontë’s portrayal of human nature, love, obsession, vengeance, manipulation and death are intensely brought to life with her use of language and narrative devices. On a second reading, I realised how much nostalgia had clouded the bleakness and brutality of my memory of Wuthering Heights, but also how I enjoyed reading it so much the first time!
Song: HALF HORSE HALF MAN by OCT
Released on the 12th of January 2025, HALF HORSE HALF MAN stands looming and peerless in the contemporary music landscape. At once faithful to the anthems from which it draws inspiration and unmistakably zeitgeisty, this instant classic will surely function as a landmark moment in the lives of many listeners. There was the time before HALF HORSE HALF MAN, and now there is the time after HALF HORSE HALF MAN.
Some will lament that the great classical composers did not live to hear it, but listeners of faith may take comfort in the notion that Bach is being treated to the soaring chorus of HALF HORSE HALF MAN in the concert halls of kingdom come.
It was not certain whether 2025 would be a year of historic musical splendour, but I am elated to report that only 2 weeks into January, we have our answer.
Jake Bateman, Linux System Administrator – PTFS Europe
Video game: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle developed by MachineGames
Available on PC and console
Wow this game is an epic homage to Indiana Jones movies, in particular Raiders of the Lost Ark and has entered my all time game favourite top 5.
You begin the “tutorial” by recreating the first scenes of Raiders – it’s absolutely spot on. The voice acting by Troy Baker is phenomenal. I was in heaven from the start. It feels like being IN a new movie, as Harrison Ford. The cut scenes are often so nail-biting I found myself still frantically trying to control the action! First game in a long time that I have NEVER skipped any dialogue.
The locations are beautiful, (I screenshot all of them) and you are free to wander the locations and just enjoy.
The puzzles are fun and never underestimate the deeply satisfying noise of hitting a fascist with a frying pan…never gets old! I hope it’s part of a series…10/10
Sam Goldsmith, Business Development Manager – PTFS Europe