A hand-wringing, emo-prone young man is harangued by the ghost of his father to avenge his murder. The rub? Said son is so addled by overthinking he just can’t seem to check the dreadful deed off his to-do list. If this sounds like the basis of one of the Western world’s most well-known tragic theatrical works, it is.
Well, kind of. “Fat Ham” is in many ways true to its source of “Hamlet,” until it’s not. First, while we know Shakespeare was capable of ribald, rib-cracking comedy, this particular work is decidedly not among his forays into the funny. And while Shakespeare was masterful at messing with gender to great effect, the exploration in “Fat Ham” is its creator’s own doing.
Pure Theatre launches its season with the South Carolina premiere of this work by North Carolina native James Ijames that won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. As directed by Nakeisha Daniel, this irresistible, crackling production slathers on the comedy, serving up a soul-satisfying, humor-peppered starter in what Pure has coined its “Season of Delight.” It is now up at Cannon Street Arts Center through Sept. 21.
It’s true, Ijames based his play on “Hamlet,” but a downer it is not. For starters, the action happens in a backyard family barbecue (thanks to an Astroturf-covered span at the back of a brick house with sliding doors, designed by Richard Heffner). The work then has its own fun with the saga of the ever-hesitating Danish prince, refracting Hamlet’s to-be-or-not-to-be existential crisis through a contemporary exploration of gender fluidity and queer culture. And it does so with sufficient froth to spill over the beer bottles washing down all that succulent onstage pig.
When it comes to tracking Shakespeare’s original story, the clue is in the names. In “Fat Ham,” the names of the characters are signified with variations on the originals–that is, except for Hamlet himself, who is called Juicy (as a ham, after all, should be). Pegging the related names and the defining plights of those characters is an entertaining little mental game in and of itself.
To wit: We first encounter Tio, aka Horatio (David Alexander), an affable party-hardy childhood pal of Juicy (Alexandar Leary). The name of Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, is jumbled to Tedra (Tonya Smalls-Williams), but she fully retains her relaxed, whatever approach to morality, wedding Rev, the brother of her freshly dead husband Pap (with both roles played by Michael Smallwood).
Others depart from their original identities, fittingly reconsidered for the pressing issues of the day. Opal (Zania Cummings), nee Ophelia, is still drawn to water, but eschews dresses and the like. Similarly, Opal’s brother Larry (Mekhi Gaither-Burris), otherwise known as Laertes, now confronts his own quandary as he embarks on a career in the military. And their parent, the former Polonius, switches gender altogether, becoming instead their mother Rabby (Joy Vandervort-Cobb), her pomp now reflected in her Sunday-worthy finery, from her stylish satin shoes to her hella feathered hat.
Ijames has just as much sport swapping out plot turns for backyard barbecue-friendly activities, even when they belie a poignant underbelly. Kaoroke serves as comic bonanza in Tedra’s twerking, which then segues into Juicy’s soul-searching, palpably vulnerable rendition of Radiohead’s “Creep.” And rather than a play to catch the conscience of a king, Juicy opts for charades, with one pointed slip of paper.
Shakespeare’s own language finds its way to the family function, whether wholesale in Hamlet soliloquies, treated as the Bard would have done to reveal interior thoughts — or wittily wielded like the barbecue-friendly “Aye, there’s the rub.”
But in the end, the success of this production rests on the acting. From Vandervort-Cobb’s impeccably timed asides disparaging the self-described weirdo at the table to Michael Smallwood’s profoundly vexed ghost forever berating his son to Tedra’s sexy-manque moves, the ensemble brings all of these elements together in a comic crescendo, delivering a pitch of hilarity that is nothing short of euphoric. And, God, it felt good to laugh.
Still, the meat of the matter is Leary’s tender portrayal of Juicy. Cast into roles he neither requested nor embraced, Juicy is looking for a way out with as little carnage as possible—out of the tasks he is charged to do, out of the backyard he has long outgrown.
With all of this reshaping of Shakespeare, “Fat Ham” never feels, well, ham-fisted. The tweaked familial dynamics and duties turn as handily as a whole hog on a spit – like the crispy, glistening onstage specimen to which the murderous uncle Rev tends. And it’s inroad into queer identity may well have made the frequently identity-morphing Bard proud.
As the old theatrical adage goes: Dying is easy; comedy is hard. With little bloodshed and heaps of sheer joy, “Fat Ham” will give you something to chew on, in a way that goes down deliciously.
Maura Hogan is founder of Culture South. Catch “Fat Ham” at PURE Theatre until Sept. 21. Tickets start at $47 at puretheatre.org.
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(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
