Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – James Ijames’s FAT HAM both delivers and smashingly transcends the Bard’s tale

• By drediman
• May 30, 2021
• No Comments

Although I’m late to the game, I’d like to take this opportunity to extole the wonders of the smashing new film/play Fat Ham, James Ijames’s loose adaptation of Hamlet for Philadelphia’s Wilma Theatre (which I was only able to stream last week). My first exposure to the playwright’s work was actually during the pandemic by way of the short and stubbornly somber What Is Left, Burns, another filmed play for Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company. I shouldn’t be too caught up with first impressions, however. Fat Ham, which audaciously sets Shakespeare’s well-known tragedy at a Black family’s Southern-style barbecue, is another beast altogether.

First and foremost, let it be known that Mr. Ijames’s play is a comedy – and an inspired and wildly entertaining one at that. As such, Fat Ham, with its well-delineated family dynamics, actually registers more like Chekhov than it does Shakespeare. It’s not all fun and games, however. Fat Ham has some serious fish to fry, particularly with regards to issues like toxic masculinity, queerness, and systemic repression. That it does so with such incisive strokes within the vernacular of elevated parody is pretty impressive. And just when you thought you’ve got the play boxed in and figured out, it throws a curve ball. Indeed, Fat Ham transcends the notion of adaptation – one moment intersecting with Bard’s play with piercing clarity (at times even lifting soliloquies directly from the underlying play), then the next moment at defiant odds with it (just witness the play’s show-stopping conclusion).

Earlier in its virtual season, the Wilma hit the bullseye with its searing hybrid film/stage presentation of Heroes of the Fourth Turning by Will Arbery. Morgan Green’s filmed staging of Fat Ham employs the same expert cinematic techniques of that previous production but double downs on the heightened theatricality of Mr. Ijames’s world. The cast is sensational across the board, walking the line between boisterous parody and real trauma with sweet aplomb. In the central role Juicy (i.e., the play’s Danish Prince), Brennen S. Malone somehow turns decisive indecisiveness into a sexy – albeit geeky and queer – art form.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

FAT HAM
Regional theater, Play / On-demand
Wilma Theater
Approximately 2 hours
Closed