A Hamlet Roast: ‘Fat Ham’ at City Theatre

‘Fat Ham’ is not your mother’s ‘Hamlet.’ Here, Tedra (Maria Becoates-Bey) belts a ballad while the Rev (Khalil Kain, L) admires her form and Rabby (Linda Haston) appears to be rhythmically transported.

There are times when cherished classics must be updated to maintain their impact. Fat Ham, a retelling of Hamlet by American playwright James Ijames, provides a case in point. The 2022 Pulitzer Prize winner brings out aspects of the drama that were obvious to audiences of Shakespeare’s time but are often missed today. It makes the Danish prince and his predicament relevant to a world in which climate change is a looming threat, and economic malaise combines with political turmoil to test the nerves of us all …

Just kidding. Fat Ham is a hoot. On opening night at City Theatre—where the play runs through March 24—the antics on stage had the audience howling with laughter, cheering, and, in the case of the elderly woman who sat next to me, shouting encouragement at the characters to keep bringing it on. 

Content-wise, Fat Ham is related to Hamlet in about the same sense that Mel Brooks’ and Gene Wilder’s Young Frankenstein is related to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein. Some basic elements of the original are used, but even they are modified. And aside from that, hold onto your hat, because away we go. 

Fat Ham does include actual grabs from Shakespeare’s script, such as portions of the “What a piece of work is man” speech and “The play’s the thing.” But they pale in comparison to the mind-bending soliloquy about a VR game that consists of throwing snowballs at gingerbread men. There is no “To be or not to be,” but there are lines like “You watch too much PBS.”

The Cast of Characters; the Existential Question

Fat Ham unfolds at a backyard barbecue in modern times. The barbecue is to celebrate the wedding of a newly widowed woman to her late husband’s brother. How newly widowed is she? Very. Her husband was stabbed to death in prison just one week ago. He’d been imprisoned for killing another guy whose bad breath offended him. And the Hamlet character at this barbecue is a young man named Juicy. He’s the son of widowed mama and dead dad. Lo, before the festivities commence, Juicy is visited by the ghost of dead dad. The ghost claims his brother arranged his assassination, so that the no-good brother—Juicy’s uncle—would be free to marry hot mama. The ghost says Juicy must take revenge by reaming out slimy uncle’s innards.

And there you have the Hamlet setup transferred to our America. Guests at the party are sort-of named after Shakespeare’s key characters, except they’re bizarre knockoffs of their predecessors. 

Opal (Elexa Lindsay Hanner) figures that ball is life. Juicy (Brandon Foxworth), like Hamlet, isn’t sure.

Ophelia, who goes mad in Hamlet, gives way to Opal (Elexa Lindsay Hanner), a wisecracking teen who’s mad for hoops and shows up twirling a basketball. Ophelia’s angry brother Laertes, who eventually kills Hamlet, becomes Opal’s enigmatic brother Larry (LaTrea Rembert), who keeps a low profile until—well, you’ll see. In place of pompous Polonius, father to Ophelia and Laertes, we get Opal’s and Larry’s mom Rabby (Linda Haston), a no-nonsense church lady but one with a wild side. You can guess it from the moment she enters wearing her Sunday best, crowned by a spectacular pink hat big enough to hold a couple of cats. 

Speaking of wild, there’s nobody looser and goosier than the bubbling bride. Juicy’s mom, Tedra, is a far cry from the courtly Queen Gertrude in Shakespeare’s play. Tedra (Maria Becoates-Bey) oozes exuberant sexiness all over the proceedings. Shimmying and sashaying gleefully, she telegraphs delight at having a new hubby to warm her heart’s cockles. And the groom? As one character points out, he’s a real motherfucker—a smarmy preacher called Rev. Played by Khalil Kain (who also plays dead dad), Rev wears a crucifix around his neck and can barely keep his apparatus in his pants.

So the barbecue begins. Whereas Shakespeare’s dialogue sparkles with quotable nuggets, so too does the language of Fat Ham, but hilariously and in a different key. This is an all-Black party—a gathering of middle-class Black Americans aspiring to higher things—and the repartee that flies back and forth is a mixture of gritty, earthy language (a man’s foul breath reeks of “pig guts and bad choices”) with polysyllabic eloquence: In a discussion of a young woman who took up with a white boy from Norway, we learn that the latter was so pale his veins stood out—making him, in effect, “that translucent boy.”

As the party’s high times get higher, our Hamlet figure, Juicy (Brandon Foxworth), retreats to brood and ponder. When somebody greets him with “Yo dude, what’s good?” he replies, in a philosophically incisive tone, “What is good, indeed?” The potato salad looks tasty but Juicy only nibbles at it. He’s got a lot on his mind. 

To kill or not to kill, that is the question. Here is where seriousness comes in. If Juicy were to skewer uncle Rev, he’d be carrying on the cycle of get-back killings found in gangster cultures everywhere. He’d also have to pay the price, perpetuating the cycle of Black men behind bars. Does duty require him to do it anyway?

And here’s a deeper twist. Juicy is gay. A mama’s boy who loves men, he’s often scorned for being “soft.” When karaoke time comes around at the barbecue, Juicy performs reluctantly. The song he mumbles out is Radiohead’s “Creep”: “I’m a creep / I’m a weirdo,” etc. Could Juicy shed his creepy softness and prove his manly hardness by murdering Rev? Or is the softer, gentler path the path of goodness?

Check out this cellphone porn, says Tio (Jordan Williams). But it is not the kind that inflates Juicy’s balloon.

Bottom Lines

While Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a serious play with threads of dark humor woven through it, Fat Ham is the opposite, a funny play shot through with seriosity. The serious threads are necessary. They lift Fat Ham above the level of silly farce and they get you rooting for the characters—especially Juicy, played with fine feeling by actor Foxworth. 

All women in the cast perform smashingly, and everybody gets a star turn. Juicy’s best friend Tio (Jordan Williams)—a parallel character to Hamlet’s Horatio—absolutely blows the doors off when he delivers the snowball soliloquy. Meanwhile strong, silent Larry delivers his knockout blow without saying a word. 

Fat Ham climaxes in an extended orgasm of sheer pandemonium. To say what happens would spoil the fun, so I leave you with three teasers. Juicy finds that he isn’t the only gay card in the deck. The play ends with fewer deaths than Hamlet does. And maybe Fat Ham, despite its many departures from the original, really is an ideal update of Hamlet.

Closing Credits and Ticket Info

James Ijames’ Fat Ham is directed for City Theatre by Monteze Freeland. Through March 24 at 1300 Bingham St., South Side. Visit City Theatre on the web for reservations. 

Scenic and projection design is by Sasha Schwartz, with sound by Howard Patterson, lighting by John D. Alexander, and costumes by Alexis Carrie. Dexter J. Singleton is the dramaturg; the fight choreographer is Samuel G.C. Muñoz, and the intimacy coordinator is Tomé Cousin. Last but never least, all hail the stage manager, Taylor K. Meszaros. There’s plenty to manage in this play.

Production photos by Kristi Jan Hoover.

Mike Vargo, a Pittsburgh-based freelancer, writes about theater and the visual arts for Entertainment Central. 

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