I've just been invited to the Australian press premiere myself on Thursday - and I must say I'm looking forward to it probably like no other movie since `Romeo + Juliet' (coincidentally). I only found out a few weeks ago that it was Stoppard, which made me extra delighted because I've always found his work so clever and distinctive and idiosyncratic (not to mention excellent). The Bard deserves no less! I'm actually in the middle of writing a radio play in a very similar vein - investigating the link between the character of Ophelia, Shakespeare's lifetime obsession with Hamlet, and the drowning death of a young woman named Katherine Hamlet in the Avon when Shakespeare was a teenager. And I will admit that forging such a life/art link convincingly is quite difficult. I shall be interested to see what Stoppard makes of it. Will Hochman wrote: > Well, yesterday I saw _Shakespeare in Love_ and not to give too much away, > but the bard and Romeo are synthesized quite brilliantly. I think it > was Tom Stoppard's screenplay work that made literature and life intersect > in some of the most lovely ways I've yet seen. Camille verona_beach@geocities.com @ THE ARTS HOLE www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442 @ THE INVERTED FOREST www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest