The wild, ultra-clever, often hilarious mashup of high and low art that is James Ijames’ 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Fat Ham” arrives at the Goodman Theatre, in partnership with Definition Theater, to take a stand that the theatrical form can be many seemingly opposite things at once — vulgar and poetic, chaotic and carefully constructed, satirical and sincere — as long as it’s robustly entertaining.
This is a loose — what an understatement! — adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” set at a Black family’s backyard barbecue in contemporary North Carolina. Hamlet doesn’t come in the form of a Danish prince here, but a young Black man named Juicy (Trumane Alston). The single-day setting involves the meat-smoking celebration of his mother’s marriage to Juicy’s uncle — less than a week after the death of Juicy’s father.
In the opening sequence, Juicy’s late father Pap (Ronald L. Conner) appears in ghost form — white sheet and all — popping out of the cooler to order his son to stop being “soft” and get going on revenge, as Pap’s brother Rev (also Conner) was responsible for his murder.
Very Hamlet-like, yes? Except that Juicy pretty much despised his father, who sure didn’t approve of his sensitive son, and was in fact in jail for committing a murder himself. Juicy doesn’t know what to do with the charge he’s been given, although killing his uncle carries a glimmer of appeal, given that Rev is even meaner than his Pap and has re-purposed Juicy’s college tuition on a bathroom re-model because he couldn’t handle the pink decor.
Ijames thus plays constantly with two types of expectations: the ones your family places on you, and the ones that Shakespeare has placed on all of us. Family and art both provide legacies that Juicy can choose to follow or not, given that it’s quite clear he doesn’t belong much in either his family or an adaptation of a Danish prince’s revenge tale. When singing karaoke — IJames reaches for what musicals can deliver when he wants to — Juicy delivers the anthem of alienation, Radiohead’s “Creep.”
It’s lonely and confusing to be without a clear direction in life, or a plotline you want to follow.
At least Juicy has some friends to talk to for advice. There’s Tio (Victor Musoni) rather than Hamlet’s Horatio, who’s very sympathetic to Juicy’s dilemma but also to Rev’s hots for Juicy’s mom. He wonders if the murder can be metaphorical.
There’s Opal (Ireon Roach) rather than Ophelia, in this case an “expressive” lesbian chafing against the demands of femininity coming from her mother Rabby. Rabby’s name doesn’t much indicate the character’s kinship with Polonius, but it doesn’t matter, especially since she’s played by E. Faye Butler with over-the-top zest, and that’s another understatement.
And there’s Laertes, I mean Larry (Sheldon Brown, showing great range), pushed into the military but wondering why the world must be so “hard,” who lets Juicy know that killing people comes with a cost.
And Juicy sure does have a supportive mother in Tedra (Anji White), the sort of Gertrude. White exudes both sex appeal and motherly encouragement and then nails the guilt part, too.
The complex demands of culture —particularly gender norms, particularly Black masculinity — meet the extremes of broadly drawn sit-com-like characters, as well as the American kitchen-sink (or patio grill) drama of family dynamics, to ponder the path to adult identity. And it’s all
filtered through a 400-plus year-old play by a dead white man who likely never ate a barbecued ham.
This production, directed by Tyrone Phillips (who staged Chicago Shakespeare’s fully satisfying “Twelfth Night”), gets nearly all the way there in plumbing the endless opportunities. The cast here is excellent, with special mentions to Conner’s emotionally toxic villain and Musoni’s brilliant blend of the dumb-sidekick sit-com trope with Horatio’s philosophy in the form of therapy-speak.
That said, I felt some absences. Alston, who has lots of improv credits, came across to me as mildly miscast and too reactive a Juicy. And the production doesn’t take full advantage of the self-awareness of the play to break down artifice and build intimacy with the audience. When this “Fat Ham” gets to the occasional Shakespearean soliloquies — the audience, the character’s inner thoughts, poetry — it feels surprisingly distant.
This is a singularly unique piece of writing though. It’s extra. It’s fun. It’s surprisingly thought-provoking. And when it all comes together, you get low comedy and high art at the very same moment.