By Sandi Masori
SAN DIEGO — I Hate Hamlet seems like a silly name for a play, but it’s playing at the Scripps Ranch Theatre through June 12 all the same. Silly name notwithstanding, the comedy is worth the watch and will entertain and delight you, with many laugh-out-loud moments.
To give you a quick summary of the plot, former tv drama star Andrew Rally (played by Alexander Guzman) moves to New York to play Hamlet after his TV show gets cancelled. He ends up living in the former apartment of legendary John Barrymore. He, his realtor, agent (Jill Drexler), and girlfriend have a seance and bring back Barrymore’s ghost (John DeCarlo).
Every time DeCarlo or Drexler showed up on stage, it was a burst of energy that stole the scene (in a good way). The scene between the two of them was a treat for the audience. DeCarlo especially shined (or should I say oozed) as the hypersexual serious actor version of Barrymore.
When I go to a show that I’ve never seen before, I don’t research it and learn all about it in advance. I love coming in with new eyes and seeing it fresh for the first time, no expectations. And so that’s what I did with this one.
One of my missions, especially writing for this publication, is to find a Jewish angle. For a good portion of the show, not having seen that the playwright was Paul Rudnick, I thought, “Ack, there’s no Jewish angle here, even though the show is set in New York. They’re all non-Jews!”. In fact, there’s even a line by Drexler’s character Lillian (Rally’s agent) where she says “Don’t ask me about good ideas, I’m German”, and while the line got a little chuckle from the audience, it seemed kinda out of place and strange.
Then a little while later, while Rally is telling about how awesome it was to be famous, he says it’s like it being at your Bar Mitzvah every single day. That line seemed to come out of nowhere and got a little bit of a chuckle.
Then there was another line where Rally is explaining that he changed his name from “Rallenberg” to “Rally” so as not to embarrass the Jews.
So here we have two, maybe three statements in the play that seem to have no purpose other than to “bagel” (signal Jewishness to) the audience. That puzzled me throughout the show, as other than the Hollywood director played by Adam Daniel being named “Gary Peter Lefkowitz,” there really didn’t seem to be any other yiddishkeit or reference to MOT status (member of the tribe, for those unfamiliar with the acronym).
As I dive into nitpicking about the unsatisfying “Jewy-ness” of the show, I first want to remind the reader that the show is lively, funny and worth seeing. Now let me get a little critical…
On the drive back home, I kept wrestling with the question of why the playwright felt the need to bagel the audience. I also felt like something was missing from the characters’ portrayals in the first half of the show. In fact, until Barrymore showed up on the stage, there seemed to be a little disconnect in the pacing, but being opening night I didn’t really dwell on that. As I pondered why the playwright put those two or three lines in the show, when they didn’t seem to move the action forward or further the plot, I realized that the Jewish playwright was writing about a Jewish character. And that Jewishness is central to his identity. But the actor playing him did not play him very “Jewy”. When I mentioned that to my teenage companion a discussion ensued over what “Jewy” even meant, and how, if we Jews are not monolithic, could I even make such a statement?
I realized that I was expecting the New York, Asheknaz Jewish angst and neuroses that come from a 5000-year history or being targeted or thrown out of every country we’ve ever inhabited, of generations of children raised with Jewish mothers with seemingly impossibly high standards for achievement and a healthy dose of daily guilt. Take away the slight whine and the right to kvetch, the overuse of our hands and shoulders, characteristics so common to our formerly Eastern European people that I, a native San Diegan, get asked if I’m from New York. Take those nuances away and you get a Jewish character who feels so unJewy that the lines meant to bagel him seem strange and out of place.
Other than that, the show had multiple laugh-out-loud moments. Unfortunately, there was also a real-life on-stage injury to Guzman which left blood on the stage. That was handled so smoothly that the audience thought it was part of the show until the action had to be briefly halted for the cut finger to be bandaged and blood wiped off the stage. After a quick reset the cast quickly got back into flow, with actor Adam Daniel even ad-libbing an entrance line about hearing that Rally cut his finger. The audience appreciated the call-back and now in-joke.
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Sandi Masori is a restaurant, theatre and lifestyle reviewer for San Diego Jewish World. By profession she helps people write and self-publish their books. When she’s not covering shows or working, she enjoys hanging out with family, reading, or searching for the best sushi in town.