I Hate Hamlet

Two Matinees - 2pm Saturday 7th and Saturday 14th September

A young, successful television actor relocates to New York and rents a marvellous, gothic apartment. With his television career in limbo, he is offered the opportunity to play Hamlet on-stage. But thereÂ’s one problem: he hates Hamlet. His dilemma deepens with the entrance of John BarrymoreÂ’s ghost, who arrives, intoxicated and in full costume, to the apartment that once was his. The contrast between the two actors: the charming, dissipated Barrymore, whose Hamlet was the greatest of his time; and Andrew Rally, hot young television star, leads to a wildly funny duel over women, art, success, duty, television and, yes, the apartment.

Paul RudnickÂ’s farcical comedy I Hate Hamlet is about the fear actors feel toward a role that is as ritualistically daunting as a climb up Mount Everest. One suspects that Rudnick (who also wrote the screenplay for the hugely successful Kevin Kline film In & Out) does not really hate Hamlet. Although he allows Andy to brutalise the "to be or not to be" soliloquy in a "Bronx-cabby-meets-valley-girl" way, it later provides his most moving personal insight. Barrymore, too, has a touching moment where he realises he has squandered his art in Hollywood.

This is an affectionately amusing, sometimes silly, and often hilarious night at the theatre.

David Meadows, whose productions of After Aida, Romeo & Juliet, and Summer of the Seventeenth Doll are among the Graduate Dramatic SocietyÂ’s most acclaimed, and whose performance in the title role of this yearÂ’s Hamlet cemented his status as one of W.A.Â’s finest classical actors, directs this laugh-a-minute comedy about the fickle nature of art and celebrity.

The GDS production of I Hate Hamlet features Kim Martin as John Barrymore and Jeff Watkins as Andrew Rally, alongside a fine supporting cast: Aletia Artemis, Dale James, Matthew Kiely, and Angela Webb.

I Hate Hamlet promises to be the comic highlight of PerthÂ’s theatrical year.