Joan Marcus
It’s as if a diaphanous paper aircraft has all of a sudden shot throughout the stage. It is a ghost, the primary ding of Hamlet within the cloth of James Ijames’ reimagining of that Shakespeare play, Fats Ham (Public Theater, to July 3), which just lately received this yr’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The play, a co-production of the Nationwide Black Theatre and Public Theater, is ready not within the Danish courtroom of yore, however within the current day at a Southern yard barbecue celebration of the marriage of Tedra (Nikki Crawford) and her useless husband’s brother, Rev (Billy Eugene Jones).
Till now, Fats Ham had solely been carried out as a streaming manufacturing by the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, the place Ijames—who spoke in regards to the conception of the play in a latest Each day Beast interview—is a co-artistic director. As a substitute of the tragedy-and-then-some of Hamlet, this can be a play that emphasizes life, and particularly Black queer pleasure, whereas interrogating all of the issues that conspire to negate the life and emotions of the central character of Juicy (Marcel Spears), who's Hamlet-ish slightly than a direct transposition, proof against following the long-lasting Shakespeare character’s full tragic trajectory. Echoing Shakespeare, Jones additionally performs Pap, Tedra’s useless husband, who has returned to chivvy and torment his son as a ghost, encouraging him to homicide the person who has supplanted him.
The play is a compact 90 minutes, however it’s as dense and considerate as it's mild on its ft and irreverent. Tio (Chris Herbie Holland), a modern-day echo of Horatio, begins the play by attempting to determine if the world of porn is for him, and later delivers a surprising soliloquy in regards to the sexual pleasures of getting down with gingerbread males.
Tio lays out Juicy’s predicament at first. “Your Pop went to jail, his Pop went to jail, his Pop went jail, his Pop went to jail, and what’s earlier than that? Huh? Slavery. It’s inherited trauma. You carrying round your entire household’s trauma, man. And that’s OK. You OK. However you don’t received to let it outline you.” The play explores how Juicy follows Tio’s clever phrases and avoids the tragedy of Hamlet, and the violence inside it, particularly when Rev takes each alternative to demean Juicy so cruelly. If anybody is asking for retribution, it's him.
The opposite characters embrace Opal (Adrianna Mitchell) as a stand-in for Ophelia, and Larry (Calvin Leon Smith) for Laertes. Their mom Rabby (Benja Kay Thomas) watches the riotous proceedings balefully, however after each Opal and Larry, a soldier, have their very own secrets and techniques to disclose, a rush to maternal judgment doesn’t occur as perhaps anticipated, however slightly she matches them with a revelation of her personal.
Benja Kay Thomas in “Fats Ham.”
Joan Marcus
The play may be very humorous and likewise wrenching. As we watch Rev’s mistreatment of Juicy we additionally sense Juicy goes to be tremendous. He isn't having a bar of anybody’s rejection, but nonetheless yearns for heat and a way of grounding. He's the perfect sort of prickly; he's even mocked for taking on-line programs to review (really, that's fairly humorous within the play). As his mom, Crawford, additionally the present’s dance captain, performs a girl rising from grief into what she insists—regardless of all of the tensions round her—would be the finest time of her life.
Directed by Saheem Ali with design by Maruti Evans, Fats Ham doesn’t precisely reimagine Hamlet a lot as take its skeins and description and make one thing new. Spears is great as Juicy; a younger man who is totally in and of himself. Anticipate his declarative burst of karaoke; it's a kind of theatrical moments you at first chuckle at as a result of it appears so excessive, you then watch Spears inhabit the track, and the artist, and it feels each bit as revelatory as his ringingly clear remolding of some intact authentic Shakespeare monologues. We even get a wonderfully timed and positioned, “There’s the rub,” referring to spice rub.
All through the play, the characters often acknowledge us, or immediately handle us. We are able to see how unhappy Juicy is, but additionally how clever and over-everything he's. He's no one’s idiot, software, or sufferer. We see the love he has for Larry, and we see—in Larry’s adoration of him—a fantastic deconstruction of the “softness” Juicy embodies, and the play promotes.
Fats Ham is a manifesto for softness, kindness, and reconciliation slightly than violence, division, and rancor. The power of Juicy isn't that he backs down from confrontation, and never that he isn’t able to violence; he's, and he's a sufferer of it, bodily (a stunning thud of a second) and verbally. He simply finally chooses to show away from each. The simplicity of his repudiation of 1 conduct and embrace of one other is each refreshing and a blunt reminder. Change is feasible; we simply should need to do it, and draw the rattling strains within the sand.
The forged of “Fats Ham.”
Joan Marcus
Sure, there's a climactic combat, however the stage doesn't come to be affected by the blood and our bodies of regular-Hamlet, however as an alternative with some sighs and clearing up, life happening, with smiles, laughter, and dancing. The carnage-heavy ending of Hamlet is rewritten. Fats Ham doesn't finish, a lot as wind down, with agency declarations that they're all carried out with dumb violence. The useless are casually raised. The disco commences.
A play about energy and murderous revenge is changed by a play a few multi-defined popping out and multi-defined delight, and the significance of discovering locations of security, love, and group. And, proper on the finish, a lot dancing.