Clone Hamlet

From Director Simon Evans (Staged - BBC): Theatre is fighting for its life. Audiences crave spectacle, novelty, something extreme enough to cut through the noise of a culture that never stops scrolling. Clone Hamlet asks a question that feels urgent right now: what happens when artists push too far in the pursuit of relevance? The film begins as a razor-sharp mockumentary: skewering ego, artistic delusion and the theatre world with hilarious (and loving) precision. That world of talking heads, behind-the-scenes squabbles and inflated self-importance is familiar, and that’s the trap. We lure viewers in with a grammar they think they know: handheld chaos, awkward pauses, combative egos, misplaced passion. It’s comforting, and that’s why it works. Then we pull the rug out. Halfway through, the tone begins to warp. The camera shifts from objective observer to subjective accomplice. Edits fracture, images echo, clones multiply in ways both absurd and unsettling. What started as comedy becomes strange, destabilising, uncanny. By the end, we’re not sure whether we’re watching theatre, cinema or the inside of Kayla’s head. The mockumentary form collapses into something closer to Birdman, Being John Malkovich, even Infinity Pool: a descent into ego, sacrifice and identity where the grotesque is still funny, but the laughter catches in your throat. That tonal shift is why this film must be made now. We live in a culture that constantly blurs fact and fiction, where self-performance is currency, and where art panders to spectacle. What happens when sacrifice for art stops being a metaphor and becomes literal? Clone Hamlet holds up a cracked mirror to this moment, both ridiculous and horrifying, and asks the audience to recognise themselves in it. The clones aren’t just a VFX flourish. They’re the perfect metaphor for our time: the endless duplication of self, each version competing for attention, each demanding to be “the real one.” Kayla’s descent isn’t only theatrical; it’s every artist’s nightmare in the age of infinite selves. Like Black Mirror, Clone Hamlet leans into speculative dread - forcing us to ask what happens if audiences keep hungering for spectacle and artists keep feeding them. What if we returned to the days when death itself was entertainment? The film invites us to laugh at the absurdity, then jolts us into unease as we realise how thin the line could be between satire and reality. Audiences want to be challenged, thrilled, surprised. Clone Hamlet does all of that. It entertains, unsettles and lingers long after the credits roll - making us question not only the future of theatre, but the future of entertainment itself.