Huntington’s “Fat Ham” Is A Raucous and Resonant Reinvention of Shakespeare’s Masterpiece, “Hamlet”

‘Fat Ham’ — Written by James Ijames. Directed by Stevie Walker-Webb, Scenic Design by Luciana Stecconni, Costume Design by Celeste Jennings, Sound Design by Aubrey Dube, Lighting Design by Xiangfu Xiao. Presented by The Huntington Theatre in association with Alliance Theatre and Front Porch Arts Collective at the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA, 527 Tremont St., through Sunday, October 29, 2023.

By Shelley A. Sackett

“Fat Ham,” winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize Award for best drama, is much more than a modern-day riff on “Hamlet,” one of Shakepeare’s most quoted, performed and adapted plays. Using the bones of the Bard’s tragedy as a structural anchor, the exceptionally talented playwright, James Ijames, has fleshed it out with analogous characters whose feet are firmly planted in the here and now and whose modern-day nightmares and dreams reflect both the mundane and the existential.

Like Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” “Fat Ham” asks the question, “How do we cope in a belligerent world untethered?” and answers it simply: “To thine own self be true.” But instead of engaging in a bloody palace battle over his wearing his father’s coveted crown, this Hamlet wants only to prove his father’s murderer’s guilt and then high tail it to greener, less legacy-laden pastures where he can let down his guard and live an authentic and happy life.

Although full of allusions to the original tragedy about the Danish king (a splendid one-page graphic summary of “Hamlet” by Mya Lixian Gosling is a welcome inclusion in the program), “Fat Ham” stands on its own. Its story is told through the eyes of Juicy/Hamlet (a spot-on Marshall W. Mabry IV), a young, queer Black man marooned in no man’s land with no lifeboat in sight.

The play opens in Juicy’s backyard as Tio/Horatio (the stand-out, gifted Lau’rie Roach), his best friend and greatest advocate, tries to get his buddy to address and snap out of his melancholy. Juicy’s father, Pap, was recently killed in jail, where he was serving time for slitting a man’s throat because he couldn’t stand the smell of his breath.

Tio, more laid back than Juicy, diagnoses Juicy’s problem as more than a reaction to his recent domestic woes. According to Tio (who sees a therapist, so he has cred in this department), Juicy isn’t suffering from individual filial grief. Rather, his is the inescapable condition of Black “inherited trauma.” “Your Pop went to jail; his Pop went to jail. His Pop went to jail. His Pop went to jail, and what’s before that?” he asks. “Slavery.”

As if that weren’t heavy enough, Juicy (like Hamlet) has much more on his plate. His mother, Tedra (a slinky Ebony Marshall-Oliver), married Pap’s brother Rev (James T. Alfred, who also plays Pap) while Pap’s body was still warm. Then, just as the backyard bar-b-q wedding celebration is about to begin, Pap appears to Juicy as a ghost.

Pap is one mean son-of-a-bitch, cursing Juicy for being soft and trying unsuccessfully (he is, after all, a noncorporeal ghost) to beat him to a pulp. Yet, he has a message and directive that Juicy can’t ignore.

Rev was behind Pap’s murder, he tells his son. He insists Juicy man up and avenge his death.

“It’s amazing what fathers think they own just because they share the same name as their son,” Juicy tells Tio, who couldn’t see Pap’s ghost but knows exactly what Juicy means.

Mirroring the relationship he had/has with his father, there is also no love lost between Juicy and Rev, who treats his nephew/son with contempt and one-upmanship, calling him a pansy and stealing his college tuition money to remodel a bathroom worthy of a new man of the house.

What should Juicy do? Be a man, embrace violence and follow in his father’s footsteps? Or take the road advocated by the laid back, don’t-worry-be-happy Tio and re-imagine what it means to be a man?

If this sounds solemn and heavy, it is. (Just read the original “Hamlet.”) Yet, in Ijames’ magical hands (and under Stevie Walker-Webb’s razor-sharp direction), such profound topics as: the unending cycle and generational trauma of male violence; sexual and racial inequity, and freedom of identity become manageable because they arrive wrapped in the gift of comedy.

Ijames’s true genius (and no doubt a reason for his well-deserved Pulitzer Prize) is his ability to infuse this story of tragedy and violence with laugh-out-loud jokes, songs, sight gags and such modern props as a karaoke machine. His troupe of lively, original and (other than Rev) compassionate people each literally vibrate to their own rhythm.

Opal/Ophelia (a perfectly cast Victoria Omoregie) is a pouty teenager, chafing at her mother’s heavy-handed directive to be ladylike and wear a dress when all she wants is to join the military and scream at the top of her lungs that she likes girls. Rabby, her rabid liquor-loving, church-lady mother and a stand-in for the equally judgmental Polonious, is played by scene-stealer Thomika Marie Bridwell. Larry/Laertes (the splendid Amar Atkins), Opal’s Marine brother who is also a closet gay, rounds out the cast.

Ijames has many tricks up his sleeve to keep the fast-paced, 90-minute (no intermission) play moving effortlessly. He manages to combine an unlikely list of ingredients (serious soliloquies, characters who break the fourth wall, slapstick, stoner raps, MTV-worthy musical song-and-dance numbers and internal monologues) to create a satisfying, hearty four-course meal.

Luciana Stecconi’s set brings the audience squarely into a lower-middle-class, well-loved, and much-used backyard. Her keen eye and attention to countless details, such as a screen door off its hinge, shows.

The one criticism (and this production is not alone in this department, unfortunately) is that the actors need to have better mics, and their lines frequently need better pacing. Nothing is more frustrating to an audience than when the end of a line is swallowed or a new one begun before laughter from the previous one has died down. Ijames’s writing is too delicious not to savor.

Some have complained that the end is a facile cop-out meant to offer an easy out for the current feel-good streaming culture. Ijames deserves more credit than that. His ending may be upbeat (and a delectable dessert), but it is deliberate and message-laden.

The playwright challenges us to answer Tio’s rhetorical question: What would life be like if we chose pleasure over harm? Judging from the audience’s reaction to the finale, it would be pretty darn good indeed. For tickets and information, go to: https://www.huntingtontheatre.org/whats-on/fat-ham/