Stage Review
FAT HAM
Book by James Ijames. Directed by Don Mays. At Wilbury Theatre Group, WaterFire Arts Center, 475 Valley St., Providence. Through April 13. Tickets are $5-$55. 401-400-7100, thewilburygroup.org
PROVIDENCE — The great Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold used to maintain that if all the plays ever written suddenly disappeared and only “Hamlet’’ miraculously survived, all the theaters in the world would still be successful.
At the Royal Shakespeare Company in London, it certainly seems as if the play — which has featured the likes of Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh, and Sophie McIntosh as Shakespeare’s most complex protagonist — has rarely been off the stage. Revivals have been produced on Broadway at least 10 times, with notable productions starring such luminaries as Richard Burton, John Gielgud, and Ralph Fiennes in the title role.
“Hamlet’’ is not only the Bard’s longest, most quoted, and most performed work, it is the most often adapted. “The Lion King’’ is “Hamlet’’ with hyenas. “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’’ is Tom Stoppard’s absurdist, existential tragicomedy that expands upon the exploits of two minor “Hamlet’’ characters. Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield’s “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)’’ ends with the shortest-ever rendering of “Hamlet,’’ which clocks in at just under three minutes. And it’s staged backward.
Given the play’s long and varied history, the question “to be, or not to be’’ comes to mind regarding playwright James Ijames’s “Fat Ham,’’ which made its off-Broadway debut at The Public Theatre in 2022 and transferred to Broadway in 2023. Does the world need another play that walks in the shadow of Shakespeare’s masterwork?
The answer is no, particularly since the Broadway production of “Fat Ham’’ lost in all five Tony categories for which it was nominated. Still, Wilbury Theatre Co.’s thoroughly enjoyable Rhode Island premiere of the play is a welcome indulgence.
“Hamlet’’ is set in Denmark in the late Middle Ages and finds its melancholic lead character and his levelheaded friend Horatio visited by the ghost of Hamlet’s dead father, the King, who asks his son to exact revenge against his uncle. Claudius had murdered him in order to seize the throne and marry Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, which has led Hamlet to grapple with emotional trauma and a sense of betrayal that has him questioning his identity, responsibility, and life itself.
“Fat Ham’’ transfers this story to a contemporary time and place — a backyard barbecue in North Carolina (realistically rendered by scenic designer Shanel LaShay Smith, lighting designer Andy Russ, and costumer Jaimy A. Escobedo) — over the course of one eventful afternoon.
Juicy (a remote but endearing Dana Reid) isn’t a Danish prince. He’s a Black, queer, and sensitive heir to the family barbecue and butcher business, one that he has turned his back on for an online degree in human resources. The party is a celebration of the nuptials between his Mom, Tedra (a dynamic Maria Albertina, who fully embraces Ijames’s depiction of “Hamlet’’’s Gertrude as a sex-starved vixen) and his Uncle Rev (Jermaine L. Pearson, a particularly caustic Claudius equivalent).
In attendance are Juicy’s Horatio-adjacent friend Tio (an engaging Jeff Ararat, whose exaggerated stoner antics often go too far to be funny), childhood friend Opal (a flat-out terrific Autumn Mist Jefferson, who serves up an intriguing take on the insecurities of “Hamlet’s’’ Ophelia), her brother, Larry (an appropriately stoic, Laertes-like Mamadou Toure), and their Bible-toting Mom, Rabby (a delightful Michelle L. Walker). The act of revenge is an opportunity for Juicy to prove to the men in his family that he isn’t soft and he isn’t weak.
One has to squint hard to find other “Hamlet’’ connections in this play, for “Fat Ham’’ has reduced the epic five acts to a 90 minute one-act, and it is a full-fledged comedy rather than a dark tragedy. Missing is Shakespeare’s poeticism, though director Don Mays and his cast find the lyric rhythms in Ijames’s writing. A few short direct address soliloquies pop up as well, as does the pilfering of some of Hamlet’s best lines, but those moments are few, forced, and slow to develop.
There are also moments that just don’t work. The brief game of charades, for example, which replaces the performance of a traveling troupe of actors in “Hamlet’’ that is intended to gauge Claudius’s reaction and potentially expose his guilt, goes nowhere. There’s a karaoke scene that is fun but frivolous. And the play’s ending, which fizzles out, is disappointing as well.
Still, one can’t overlook the reason why “Fat Ham’’ received the 2022 Pulitzer Prize and admire the work accordingly. The play is a fearless portrayal of a sensitive and self-aware main character — purposefully cast as Black and gay — who chooses to break a cycle of trauma and deny a legacy of brutality in service of his own liberation. Unlike Hamlet, Juicy chooses pleasure over pain. Amid the laughs and missteps, Ijames crafts a tender story. And that story is well rendered in this intimate Wilbury Theatre staging.
Bob Abelman is an award-winning theater critic who formerly wrote for the Austin Chronicle. Connect with him
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