I Hate Hamlet, about the slings and arrows of playing the Dane, comes to Hong Kong
The ghost of famous stage actor John Barrymore, who first played Hamlet in 1922, returns to help a young actor who has reluctantly taken on the role
Every serious actor supposedly aspires to play Shakespeare’s Danish Prince. However in I Hate Hamlet, a 1991 play by Paul Rudnick being presented next month at the Fringe Underground by the Hong Kong Players, a TV star is offered the role and quite genuinely doesn’t want to take it.
Playwright Paul Rudnick got the idea for the play when he moved into an apartment in Greenwich Village in New York, and learned that a previous occupant had been the actor John Barrymore.
Inspired by his new surroundings, Rudnick imagined Barrymore, who was particularly renowned for his interpretation of Hamlet, coming back as a ghost to tutor a ham actor in the necessary stagecraft for the role.
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“It is a fantastic opportunity to vent 14 years of bad acting habits in one go,” says Hamish Campbell, who plays the role of Andrew Rally opposite Neville Sarony’s ghostly Barrymore.
“There is a fine line between good and bad acting. A bad actor performs for himself, marvelling at his own immense talent and skill. Through the play Andrew has to learn to break from this, and work hard to truly impress an audience.”
Sadly no complete record exists of Barrymore’s Hamlet, a role he first played in 1922 and one that led to his being acclaimed as the greatest Shakespearean actor of his day.
An attempt to film him in the role was made in 1933, but the project was abandoned. However, there is surviving footage of a screen test – and a late-career recitation of the “to be or not to be” soliloquy –that can be found on YouTube, and which gave Sarony some raw material to work with.