Fat Ham, or as the Script Says, “Kinda Hamlet”

This late in the season when I read that a play focuses on “toxic black masculinity and queerness.” part of me reflexively thinks not another one. Theater has been flooded with the theme – more of it attempting to pound square pegs into round holes than those emerging successful. I’m happy to report that James Ijames’ Pulitzer Prize winning Fat Ham is so exuberant, imaginative, irreverent, and, at base, relevant, that concerns are jettisoned.

Billy Eugene Jones as Pap, Marcel Spears as Juicy

Juicy (Marcel Spears) is gay, sensitive, and angry. He and spaced-out best friend Tio (Chris Herbie Holland) are decorating Juicy’s backyard for the barbecue wedding celebration of his oversexed mom, Tedra (Nikki Crawford) and cocky, pit-master uncle Rev (Billy Eugene Jones) who’s been “Stanley-steamering” her for some time. The family owns a ribs restaurant. A tossed off “there’s the rub” is the first of many Shakespearean quotes. If you know the play, it’s like finding Ninas. (The name of caricaturist Hirschfeld’s daughter hidden in much of his work.)

A bit of nifty stage magic precedes the visit of Juicy’s father/Rev’s brother’s ghost, Pap (also played by Jones) who was murdered while serving time. The vengeful spirit conscripts his son into stepping up like a man and killing Rev, the man responsible.

Billy Eugene Jones as Rev with Nikki Crawford as Tedra; Marcel Spears as Juicy

Also at the party are Tedra’s overbearing friend Rabby (Benja Kay Thomas), Rabby’s willful, gleefully violent daughter Opal (Adrianna Mitchell), and her spit-and-polish soldier son Larry (Calvin Leon Smith). Both kids have been forced into their mother’s ideal image of them. The characters might conceivably represent Ophelia (without a jot of romance) and Laertes. They’re both gay.

Fat Ham proceeds at an eruptive, entertaining clip. Intermittent disolving of the fourth wall about which characters are inevitably suspicious – “What you telling them?!” – is tossed with karaoke, charades, aspirations, accusation and bloodless violence (excellent work by fight director Lisa Kopitsky). Inspired choreography (Darrell Grand Moultrie). At the wedding table epitomizes the group’s being out of (earthly) control. Young people struggle to inhabit their true identities. A remarkable finale leads us to hope.

James Ijames’s play takes an iconic bloodbath of desire, madness and vengeance and turns it into a dramady bouffe leading us to feel sideswiped but smiling. Integration of the bard’s tale is clever and apt. The piece is as original as it gets.

The Company

Director Saheem Ali (Associate Director/Resident Director of the Public Theater) helms an explosion of eye-opening storytelling. Pacing, attention to detail, aesthetics, and characterization are accomplished. My sole caveat is that some of the actors speak vernacular too quickly slurring and hampering comprehension.

The cast is uniformly grand with a spotlight on Marcel Spears’s (Juicy) multifaceted abilities.

Costumes (Dominique Fawn Hill) are wonderful. From Rabby’s purple, over the top, Sunday-go-to-church ensemble to Tedra’s revealing backyard get-up and Juicy’s hip/hop layers to Larry’s chocolate soldier change over.

Set design (Maruti Evans) manifests a realistic back porch and yard providing canvas for fantasy and chaos. Props are just right. Sound and light respectively by Mikaal Sulaiman and Stacey Derosier are supportive and distinctive.

Skylar Fox’s illusions unconventionally add humor.

Go with an open mind.

Photos by Joan Marcus

Fat Ham by James Ijames
Directed by Saheem Ali

The Public Theater
425 Lafayette Avenue