Ghost Writing

his play was written in sympathy with every high-school student who hates iambic pentameter," explains Paul Rudnick of his new play, / Hate Hamlet, which stars Nicol Williamson and has just opened on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre. "I wrote the title as a proud declaration—I loathe Hamlet. I have always been suspicious of lieges and fardels." The author of two wonderfully witty novels, Social Disease and I'll Take It, Rudnick conceived the idea for this play when he moved into John Barrymore's old apartment. In I Hate Hamlet, a TV actor reluctantly making his Shakespearean debut is coached by the ghost of Barrymore. So is this autobiographical? Has Rudnick been visited by the actor's spirit? "Of course!" he says. "There is a ghost in my apartment and he wrote the play."

LYNN HIRSCHBERG