How intractable is generational trauma anyway? Sadness can be sung about or sung away the call to violence can be refused even bigotry and hatred can wilt in the face of affection and fabulousness. In this way, the original’s “to be or not to be” conundrum eases up into something more like “to be bothered or not.” The play bends reality a bit to make it seem pliable. But Tedra is so physically expressive in her own relationship, so delighted to see Juicy touched and embraced, you can tell Ijames is simply unwilling to let his character be that sort of sad for long. Jackson’s A Strange Loop - misunderstood by a Christian family determined to simultaneously love and exclude him. Fat Ham starts by showing us a lonely, queer Black man comparable to, say, Usher in Michael R. But this is all in good, mutually supportive, fun. During a karaoke session, Crawford’s outsize performance (she somehow does a striptease without taking her clothes off) steals the show Spears has to belt out a passionate rendition of Radiohead’s “Creep” just to get the spotlight back. He quickly makes us aware that Pap isn’t worth your concern, let alone a whole vengeance plot, and his attention turns to Juicy’s just erotic deserts and his sex-positive mother. I often found it flattening and false.Įven though Juicy tosses in a few nicely performed monologues from the original, Shakespeare’s play isn’t Ijames’s main target. As he did in last summer’s Merry Wives, Ali applies a heavy touch to the comedy, which worked for the people laughing around me. At the party, Rabby badgers her grown children, Opal (Adrianna Mitchell) and Larry (Calvin Leon Smith), both of whom have a similar secret to Juicy’s.
There’s a “Thank ya, Jesus!” yelled by the play’s Polonius-equivalent, neighbor Rabby (Benja Kay Thomas), who goes broad in full church-lady mode. Ijames and his director Saheem Ali also lean into shtick for a good portion of the humor - Tedra wants to be praised for her sweet potato salad (“You make this?” “You know I did!”) Rev, who doesn’t seem to actually go to church much, does a wild-eyed prayer at the dinner table. Shakespeare’s “Ay, there’s the rub” gets repurposed to talk about marinade, for instance, and Spears takes a moment to wink at the audience about it. Ijames’s title is both a reference to the main character’s lusciousness - he’s described as “thicc” in the character list and as “opulent” by a man who desires him - and to Hamlet’s “funeral baked meats” that furnish forth the marriage table. He’s not worried that anything bad will happen to the gay son he barely cared for. Gleaming in a bedazzled white suit, Pap wafts around in ghostly dudgeon, demanding Juicy make things right. This sounds bleak, but based on Juicy’s super-cute mourning outfit - a half-up pair of black overalls, adorably distressed - the situation is being played for laughs. Pap’s place at the grill has been taken by his identical brother, Rev (also Jones), and now we’re at the party celebrating Rev’s wedding to Juicy’s mother, Tedra (Nikki Crawford), held only days after Pap has gone into his grave. Instead of princely, dithering Hamlet, Ijames gives us cash-strapped, indecisive Juicy (Marcel Spears), whose murdered father, Pap (Billy Eugene Jones), was a barbecue pitmaster, a bad dad, and a capricious killer. Other flat surfaces, like a checked tablecloth on a folding table, sometimes hide eerie mysteries, so there might be more behind that paper-printed kitchen - say, some force capable of tearing through the domestic scene. Beyond a sliding glass door, the interior of the house is obviously a blown-up photograph, a two-dimensional image. Set designer Maruti Evans hints that there’s something uncanny going on there, despite the cheery balloons and bright green lawn. His Hamlet-manqué could be anywhere in North Carolina, says the script, or Tennessee. So what is the feeling of the as-yet-unmade choice - fear, exhilaration, or delay? For Ijames it’s the melting lassitude of a summer backyard get-together, somewhere in which the heat is serious. To like Fat Ham or not to like Fat Ham? Days later, that is still my question. After seeing the Pulitzer Prize–winning Fat Ham, I have been lost in my own version of that long indecision, teetering between disappointment and pleasure.
They each deal with a man as he examines and extends a moment of doubt - the hero needs to take action, but he doesn’t know what that action should be. But equivocation does make up the texture of both plays. At least … I mean … that’s sort of true? Appropriately enough, I’m not confident that I’m right about either of those premises: Ijames’s comedy at the Public Theater is more about alleviating generational anguish than it is about Shakespeare, for instance. James Ijames’s Fat Ham is a play about Hamlet, and Hamlet is a play about ambivalence therefore Fat Ham is a play about ambivalence.