He even directly recites the “catch the conscience of the king” soliloquy from “Hamlet” before the game. Over the next few scenes, Juicy agonizes a bit over whether to kill his uncle, and tries to determine Rev’s guilt - not by a play-within-the-play but by a game of charades. Suddenly, Juicy’s dead father, Pap, manifests, covered by a checkered picnic tablecloth (kudos to Skylar Fox for the clever and amusing illusions.) Pap (Billy Eugene Jones) wants to be avenged he tells his son he was killed in prison, shanked by an inmate on orders of his brother Rev (who is also portrayed by Jones.) Billy Eugene Jones as the ghost of Pap, and Marcel Spears as his son, Juicy. As the play begins, he is putting together the decorations for the wedding reception for his mother Tedra and his uncle Rev, accompanied by his cousin and oldest friend Tio (Chris Herbie Holland) Tio’s the one who watches porn and gets high.
Juicy, the Hamlet character (Marcel Spears), is a queer, fat Black college student, studying Human Resources at an online college. Juicy with his mother Tedra The Rev with his deceased brother’s wife Tedra The staging by director Saheem Ali at the Public Theater, in a co-production with the National Black Theater, brings out both what’s most entertaining and most serious about the script, thanks to a great cast and a fine design, with just the right amount of magic - enough to make you want to overlook the play’s shortcomings.
Its only previous production, by Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater (where Ijames is co-artistic director) was online during the pandemic. So it’s best not to dwell on “Fat Ham” having won a Pulitzer let’s just consider the award terrific marketing for the first ever New York stage production of this play – in fact, the first in-person stage production of it anywhere. As I point out in my guide to theater awards, the Pulitzers have a spotty record for recognizing work that endures. Some may wonder: Is “Fat Ham” on a par with Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” or Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie,” or Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible?” Actually, none of those plays, now understood to be masterpieces of the American theater, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Taking place during a Black family’s backyard barbecue in the American South, James Ijames’s play is a sometimes raunchy, sometimes pointed, largely freewheeling comedy, whose characters Karaoke to pop dance hits watch porn and get high come out of the closet. ‘Fat Ham,” this year’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, which opened tonight at the Public Theater, is inspired by “Hamlet,” but it parts ways with the Bard, and not just because of all the partying.