Review/Theater; Williamson as Specter in 'I Hate Hamlet'

"I love this apartment because it's like a stage set, it's like the theater," says Andy Rally, a young bicoastal actor who has taken up new digs in Greenwich Village after the cancellation of his television series "L.A. Medical." And no wonder. Andy's new flat is the extravagantly Gothic apartment long ago occupied by John Barrymore, and even in 1991 it remains a suitably regal throne room for any show-business prince, past, present or still aspiring. Since Andy (Evan Handler) is about to assume Barrymore's most celebrated Shakespearean role in a Joseph Papp production in Central Park, what is to stand in the way of his complete artistic fulfillment? Only one thing. Much as Andy loves his apartment, loves the theater and loves stardom, he hates Hamlet.

"I Hate Hamlet," the new comedy by Paul Rudnick at the Walter Kerr Theater, is the unapologetically silly and at times hilarious tale of how Andy rises above his fear and loathing of the role people ritualistically refer to as "the greatest in the English-speaking world." To do so, he must seek the help of Barrymore himself, who comes back from the grave to give his young would-be successor instructions in Shakespearean acting, not to mention life and love. Don't ask how and why Barrymore rises from the dead -- Mr. Rudnick's seance takes far too long as it is -- but do be cheered by the news that the ghost is played by Nicol Williamson. A first-class Hamlet in his own right once upon a time, and on occasion as flamboyant an offstage figure as Barrymore was, Mr. Williamson offers a riotous incarnation of a legendary actor, lecher and lush (not necessarily in that order) whom even death has failed to slow down.

Mr. Williamson gets the audience laughing from the moment he enters in full Hamlet regalia and makes a beeline, as if yanked by a magnet, to the nearest uncorked Champagne bottle. Mr. Rudnick, a wisecrack artist whose other works include the play "Poor Little Lambs" and the novel "Social Disease," quickly gives his star some high-flying bouts of drunken hamming worthy of Sid Caesar on "Your Show of Shows," or Peter O'Toole in "My Favorite Year." When Barrymore instructs his young protege on the art of the curtain call, Mr. Williamson demonstrates how to milk the crowd with a cynical yet rousing bravura that might have impressed the real-life Barrymore clan. His woozy swoons, bombastic braggadocio and swashbuckling sexual antics are so eerily reminiscent of John Barrymore himself in his self-parodistic decline that Mr. Williamson creates the illusion of bearing much more of a physical resemblance to his celebrated prototype than he actually does.

Charmingly enough, Mr. Rudnick's play tries, albeit with scarce success, to recall the screwy comic style of Barrymore's Hollywood and Broadway day: the spirit of "Here Comes Mr. Jordan," "Topper" and "Blithe Spirit" can be found in the supernatural pranks of "I Hate Hamlet," and the director, Michael Engler, has added to that nostalgic mood with a fabulously glossy set by Tony Straiges, silver-screen moonlight by Paul Gallo and hokey old-time background music by Kim Sherman. For a further whiff of period flavor, Celeste Holm, an actress whose own career dates back to the tail end of the Barrymore period, appears in "I Hate Hamlet" as a one-time Barrymore flame, and her reunion with her deceased paramour in Mr. Rudnick's play gives the evening an all-too-brief injection of rueful Lubitsch romantic fantasy.

That scene excepted, the tone of "I Hate Hamlet" tends to be more contemporary and collegiate, and the writing is highly variable, taking a noticeable plunge every time Mr. Williamson fades into the set's acres of Gothic woodwork. Mr. Rudnick is witty on such subjects as Method acting ("We must never confuse truth with asthma"), the resistance of modern audiences to Shakespeare ("It's algebra on stage!") and Hollywood's patronizing attitude toward the New York theater. The humor becomes mechanical, however, when the playwright tosses in one-liners on such well-worn topics as television programming, real-estate brokers and trendy courses of study at the New School.

The duller volleys of dialogue would not be so noticeable if the playwright had devised an air-tight comic structure to keep the play moving forward no matter what. But "I Hate Hamlet" is too often content to be an extended two-hour sketch and never musters the theatrical ambitions of Michael Frayn's "Noises Off" and Terrence McNally's "It's Only a Play," the better made backstage comedies it occasionally echoes. Mr. Rudnick's oddest lapses are his inability to make consistently riotous farcical hay out of Barrymore's spells of ghostly invisibility and his decision to keep his play's promised climax, Andy's opening night, offstage. The most elaborate subplot in "I Hate Hamlet" -- Andy's attempts to bed his virginal, Ophelia-esque girlfriend -- piles up far more stage time than laughs.

In his direction, Mr. Engler seems less secure here than he did in "Eastern Standard" and "Mastergate." Snappily choreographed scenes intermingle with those in which Mr. Williamson seems to be lolling idly about like standby equipment. The production's biggest failure is the performance of Mr. Handler, who was so good this season as the enraged doctor's son in "Six Degrees of Separation." As Andy Rally, he lacks what Mr. Rudnick calls the "right twinkle" required of a television star, and his comic range rarely extends much beyond that memorable note of hysteria he brought to his temper tantrum in "Six Degrees." Jane Adams and Caroline Aaron, as Andy's pretentious love interest and pushy broker, are also adequate rather than inspired, though Adam Arkin is remarkably fresh as a Hollywood huckster who explains that television is artistically superior to theater, not in the least because the audience need not pay any attention to it.

Throughout the evening's running debate about the merits of the stage and the small screen, there is never any doubt which side Mr. Rudnick is on. It is even possible that the playwright does not hate "Hamlet," all the jokes at its voluminously gloomy expense notwithstanding, for he permits Mr. Williamson to act Hamlet's advice to the players and act it movingly, after which the actor delivers an equally fervent soliloquy in which Barrymore regrets how he squandered his art and soul in Hollywood following his Shakespearean stage triumph in New York. That Act II speech seems to touch something deep, almost tragic, in Mr. Williamson, and so it does in us. But mostly "I Hate Hamlet" is light and ramshackle, affectionately amusing about the theater when at its sharpest, and, one must say, still a little funnier than "Hamlet" when not. I Hate Hamlet By Paul Rudnick; directed by Michael Engler; setting by Tony Straiges; costumes by Jane Greenwood; lighting by Paul Gallo; sound by Scott Lehrer; music by Kim Sherman; fight direction by B. H. Barry; associate producers, 126 Second Avenue Corporation and William P. Wingate. Presented by Jujamcyn Theaters, James B. Freydberg, Robert G. Perkins and Margo Lion. At the Walter Kerr Theater, 219 West 48th Street. Felicia Dantine . . . Caroline Aaron Andrew Rally . . . Evan Handler Deirdre McDavey . . . Jane Adams Lillian Troy . . . Celeste Holm John Barrymore . . . Nicol Williamson Gary Peter Lefkowitz . . . Adam Arkin