The Tension between Art and Commerce
The overarching theme being worked out through the play is the tension between the show and business parts of acting entertainment. Andrew is an actor who has become famous in part because of the blurriest line here: starring in a popular commercial. He has also managed to become wealthy enough to move into a huge apartment building in NYC thanks to starring in a popular, but not very good TV show. Gary represents the spectrum who is almost entirely devoted to commerce and has little good to say about trying to confuse a business with art. And then there’s John Barrymore who just so happened to reach the apex of his career on the legitimate stage at just the point Hollywood came calling. The sacrifice of stage legitimacy doing “real” acting in tragedies like Hamlet for the fame and fortune of “movie acting” in lesser fare has forever remained a blemish on his reputation; a reputation made worse by his spiral into alcoholism and Hollywood decadence.
That Guy Who Said "To be or not to be"
Lying beneath the broader theme of the play is one that is much more narrowly focused and may perhaps remained invisible to many in the audience despite being telegraphed right there in the title. For most of its four centuries of production, the reputation of both the play and the character Hamlet have enjoyed being at or near the top of critical appreciation. Only in the latter half of the 20th century did cracks begin to appear in which any serious criticism of the play was not viewed as scandalous. This is less so relative to the main character which is still widely regarded as the one role by which all truly serious actors are judged. Any actor receiving classical training either knows he will one day have to take a shot at the role or at least hope that he will be given the opportunity. The character of Hamlet is so pervasive and omnipresent in Western culture that one hardly needs ever to have actually seen the play to know at least something about him. “To be or not to be” is the stage equivalent of the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony: each are aspects about serious culture that even those consumed by pop culture just know. And yet, Andrew’s admission of “I hate Hamlet” which once may have been accepted only as sour grapes by an actor knowing he’s never going to get that call has now become acceptable for serious actors to mutter in public even if it has not necessarily become a commonly voiced sentiment. Like the character himself, Hamlet’s relationship to the public at large and especially to actors is turning out to be more rather than less complicated with the passage of time.
William Shakespeare's "Hamlet"
More obvious is the theme of I Hate Hamlet mirroring Hamlet in ways that are likely recognizable on an unconscious level long before the connection is made consciously. For instance, the brownstone is often referred as being like a castle…much like Elsinore, the setting of Shakespeare’s tragedy. Andrew’s girlfriend nearly commits suicide…unlike Ophelia who succeeds. It may even well be possible that many people actually make it out of the theater before it hits them Andrew received advice from a ghostly father figure…much like Hamlet is visited by the ghost of the father delivering a message of advice on enacting vengeance. That such obvious connections between the two works may go unnoticed for some time speaks to the pervasiveness awareness of Shakespeare's tragedy. Somehow, many of us have come to know so much about the most famous play ever written without actually reading or seeing it that much of what we know has become disconnected from its source in a way. It is possible to know you are seeing plot elements in here that are familiar to you without consciously realizing why they seem familiar.
