At Miners Alley, a look at whether to sell your soul or bow to the muse

‘I Hate Hamlet’ puts a TV actor on a whirlwind journey

Instant actor, just add Shakespeare,” sneers Andrew Rally in Paul Rudnick’s 1991 comedy I Hate Hamlet. A pretty-boy TV actor whose medical drama was just canceled, Andrew is in New York where he’s been encouraged by his agent to try his hand at Shakespeare in the Park. The idea that his career would be enhanced by playing Hamlet sounds ridiculous for an actor who knows he’s a lightweight, but he’s also being pressured by his theatre-nerd girlfriend to go for it. And who knows — maybe she’ll reconsider the whole saving-her-virginity-for-marriage thing.

It’s a fun premise that gets a sci-fi spin when the great thespian himself, John Barrymore, shows up in ghostly form to help Andrew become Hamlet. After all, his real estate agent Felicia (Madelyn J. Smith) informs him that the place he’s renting was once Barrymore’s, so perhaps there’s some of his mojo still lingering in the air.

Andrew is played by John Hauser, who hits the role with just the right amount of sarcasm and malleability to be molded by the characters around him. His wise-cracking German agent Lillian (a very funny Gin Walker) — who once had a fling with Barrymore in this very apartment — is pressuring him to do the play he professes to hate while his girlfriend Dierdre (Rachel Barkalow) plays the even-stronger sex hand to get him into the tights.

After a ridiculous, impromptu séance led by amateur-medium Felicia, Barrymore appears in full-on Hamlet costume replete with bodkin, tights and a generous codpiece. Brik Berkes, who’s got an impressive CV of appearances in Shakespeare shows in Colorado and beyond, is enormously enjoyable as the ghost of a drunken thespian who consider his own performances as Hamlet the highlight of his career. Playing the no-one-can-see-me hand for all its worth, Berkes mines the funny with a variety of takes off comments from the living — particularly those of Dierdre, whose hormonal swooning is as intoxicating as the whiskey he’s downing in large quantities.

Barkalow is a hoot as the under- and oversexed rich girl used to getting what she wants, and it’s a lot of fun watching her tie Andrew in knots.

Despite all the encouragement, Andrew is still awash in self-doubt, and it’s only some tough love in the form of an all-too-real swordfight that convinces him to commit to the part. (Props to fight choreographer Amy Arpan for some well-done swordplay.) But he still must contend with a significant other force: his director buddy Gary Peter Lefkowitz, played with bombastic bravado by Zayaz Da Camara. A mashup of Chris Farley and Michael Moore, Da Camara threatens at every entrance to suck all of the oxygen out of the room with their dynamic presence. Fortunately, director Rory Pierce keeps things balanced enough that it doesn’t happen, but the audience nonetheless finds itself looking forward to that door banging open and Da Camara making another entrance.

Other elements of the production are topnotch, from the costumes by Steffani Day and Jonathan Scott-McKean’s excellent set to the lighting design by Vance McKenzie.

On its face, I Hate Hamlet is a light romp with plenty of laughs, but it also speaks to how the arts can be viewed for their literary and intellectual value or as mere commodity to be exploited by the highest bidder. Gary and Felicia are entirely transactional beings, philistines out for a buck who don’t care if they sound like boors. For Barrymore and Dierdre and, eventually, Andrew, the pursuit of great art is a higher calling that demands our best, and ultimately the story lands in the right place even as Gary and Felicia decamp to LA.