Poor Yorick, the joke was on you

The note taped to the theater window says simply, “Official notice: Francesco Vitali is no longer associated with the Tamarind Actor’s Studio.” It goes on to list a number for rental information and concludes, “The production of Hamlet has closed.”

Curtains, in other words. And an inconspicuous ending to a conspicuous piece of theater.

“Hamlet,” the most recent production at the Tamarind Theatre on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood, starred Vitali -- the theater’s owner and artistic director, whose mug (along with Yorick’s) was plastered on billboards and buses throughout the city.

But the high-profile marketing campaign for Vitali and the 85-seat theater backfired.

“A blatant vanity production,” said The Times review, judging the show “purgatorial theater -- a production so dreadful that a poor playgoer will surely receive comp time in the afterlife for merely sitting through it.”

Another reviewer passed on points in the afterlife and walked out during intermission.

“In defense of my bad behavior,” wrote Steven Leigh Morris in the L.A. Weekly, “I at least waited for the interval to flee; the entire back row didn’t.”

Shortly thereafter, the production shut down and the note went up.

Alas ...