REVIEW: Fat Ham

FAT HAM

The scene opens in the backyard of a ranch-style house in the South. A somewhat pudgy young Black man is blowing up balloons. There’s going to be a party celebrating the marriage of his mother and his father’s brother, which he feels is unseemly, considering his father’s recent death. Was his uncle responsible? If that sounds a bit like Hamlet, you get the connection with Fat Ham. But instead of being a tragedy, for the most part it’s a hilarious, albeit provocative, comedy.

James Ijames’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, now at the American Airlines Theatre, ran previously  at the Public Theatre, home to many Shakespearean productions, both downtown and in the park. James nods toward Shakespeare without making it an homage. The aforementioned young Black man is Juicy, who has an uncertain future and shares some of Hamlet’s bitterness about the marriage. In addition to the mother, known as Tedra and the uncle, known as Rev, there’s Opal (read Ophelia), Tio (Horatio), Larry (Laertes), and Rabby (a woman representing Polonius). Finally, the ghost of the father is called Pap and is played by the same actor as Rev. All are portrayed by an excellent cast.

Fat Ham is largely concerned with gender roles. The name “Juicy” is suggested by his ample flesh and his “softness,” Both queer and Black, a double whammy, he lacks the requisite masculinity of Southern Black culture, earning the disgust of his putative stepfather. Juicy is good friends with Opal, but has no romantic interest, which is fine with her, since she’s not just a tomboy, but a lesbian. Larry, just arriving to the party in military dress uniform, appears to be a model soldier, but harbors secret sexuality. “Can you save me?” he asks Juicy.

 Much of the humor comes from differing expectations. Juicy’s expressed career goal is human resources, which is ironic considering the relationship among these people (and a certain ghost). Marcel Spears (best known as Marty on TV’s “The Neighborhood”) plays Juicy with a comically quizzical “do you believe this” attitude, which echoes some of Hamlet’s sarcasm in Shakespeare’s play. When asked what his role is, he replies, Hamlet-like, “I ponder.”  He occasionally breaks the fourth wall, giving an eye roll to the audience, and can get a big laugh with a Shakespeare reference. During a debate about barbecued ribs, which are being served picnic-style at the wedding, he quips, “There’s the rub!” (a cheap laugh, but irresistible).

“There’s the rub” comes from Hamlet’s “To or not to be” soliloquy, and while Juicy doesn’t say those immortal words, he does refer to these lines:

To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil…

There are actual quotes from Hamlet: “What a piece of work is man” is one,” and the passage from Hamlet where Hamlet importunes an acting troupe to perform in front of the king and queen. In Fat Ham it’s a game of charades which Juicy proposes, quoting Shakespeare:

I have heard

That guilty creatures sitting at a play

Have, by the very cunning of the scene,

Been struck so to the soul that presently

They have proclaimed their malefactions.

… The play’s the thing

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of...the...king

The play may be the thing, but Fat Ham is anything but a conventional. A karaoke scene has the exciting Nikki Crawford as Tedra doing a full-tilt version of Crystal Louise’s “100% Pure Love,” which infuriates Juicy even more. He responds by performing Radiohead’s “Creep” (“I’m a weirdo/What the hell am I doing here”), which is its antithesis. After Rev dies (not by poison, but on a rib), he’s apparently resurrected. Then Larry literally comes out in a Prince-like production number with lights which proclaim, “See What I See.”

Shakespeare is such fertile territory that he can inspire something as broad as the musical comedy, Something Rotten, the movie, Shakespeare in Love, or the novel Hamnet. Fat Ham is James’s unique take. Once you get past the uproarious laughs, there’s plenty, as Juicy would say, to “ponder.”