"Hamlet" as a turnoff?
"It's a funny thing, but just putting the name 'Hamlet' up on a theater marquee can be enough to scare people off," said Kristi Loera, executive director of the Live Theatre Workshop.
That's why she had a twinge of doubt over staging Paul Rudnick's "I Hate Hamlet," despite its reputation for being a lighter-than-air, laugh-a-minute comedy.
"I came to the LTW from a background in restaurant management," Loera continued, "and when I was interviewed to run the Workshop, one of the promises I made was to get them out of debt. 'Just put a single mom in charge,' I told them. 'You'll be back in the black in no time.' "
She laughed with the memory.
"Of course, it wasn't that easy. One of the things I discovered right away was that going into the black meant putting on more audience-pleasing shows than challenging ones. . . . That's why that old theater-manager's chestnut about 'Hamlet' on the marquee nagged at me. Thank goodness, Howard Allen talked me out of it."
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Allen is directing "I Hate Hamlet," which LTW opens next week.
"Fortunately," he said in a phone interview.
"I'd both acted and directed at the LTW, and Kristi trusted me to direct this one. Plus which, Paul Rudnick, the playwright, is one of the most seasoned writers around — he's really funny, but not just gags, like Neil Simon; the way he writes characters is more like Chekhov."
Allen, a Tucson resident since 1970, knows of which he speaks.
He has a master's degree in directing from the University of Arizona, has worked extensively as an actor and a director in Tucson theater, teaches writing for TV and film at Pima Community College.
"The inspiration for 'I Hate Hamlet' came when Rudnick answered an ad in The New York Times for a 'medieval duplex' apartment in Greenwich Village, which later turned out to have been occupied once by John Barrymore himself," said Allen about the play's origins.
"One thing led to another, and Rudnick imagined a situation where a big TV soap star takes an offer to play Hamlet on Broadway, comes to town for rehearsals, starts to get cold feet right away, ends up in this apartment and is haunted by the ghost of Barrymore, who is determined not to let him chicken out.
"They end up dueling," Allen says with a laugh, "and I mean with swords, as well as words. Plus, Rudnick brings in some wonderful supporting characters, a flighty girlfriend, a big-shot agent, the soap star's writer/producer/director, who insists on him coming back to Hollywood and dropping this serious-theater nonsense ('Shakespeare!' this guy says. 'It's like algebra on stage!'), and a bunch of other funny people. The play is basically a grand workout for the two actors who play Andrew the soap star and John Barrymore's ghost. But even the walk-ons are beautifully realized."
What really draws Allen to "I Hate Hamlet," he said, "is that it's basically a valentine to the theater, something that seems light and silly but is based on what actors really do, what the theater is all about. It's the perfect play to get anyone over the age of 12 who has never been to the theater to come to a live show and fall in love with the whole thing."
I Hate Hamlet
• Presented by: Live Theatre Workshop.
• Playwright: Paul Rudnick.
• Director: Howard Allen.
• When: Previews 7:30 p.m. Thursday and next Friday. Opening is 7:30 p.m. Dec. 30. Continues through Feb. 4.
• Where: Live Theatre Workshop, 5317. E. Speedway.
• Tickets: $17, with discounts available.
• Information: 327-4242.
• Cast: Stephen Frankenfield, Richard Ivey, Jodi Rankin, Kristi Loera, Eric Schumacher, Maxine Gillespie.
• Running time: 2 hours with one intermission.
• Online: Find information about the production and Live Theatre Workshop at www.livetheatreworkshop.org.
• Look for: The review in the Jan. 5 Accent.
