If Hamlet were alive and well in the American South today, he’d probably be eating barbecue and launching puns about “the rub.” And instead of Danish royalty, his parents might be the reigning king and queen of burnt ends and smoked ribs.
Such is the conceit of James Ijames’ play Fat Ham, one of the funniest comedies to grace the American stage in recent years, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and closes the Unicorn Theatre’s 2024-2025 season this May 14th through June 8th. This Kansas City premiere features the directorial gifts of Tosin Morohunfola, a University of Kansas graduate and longtime local favorite whose successes as actor, writer, producer, and filmmaker in our region took him first to Chicago and, more recently, to Hollywood and international renown.
Fat Ham posits that there is indeed much to laugh at in the bard’s weird ghost story with its indecisive prince and murderous uncle. But Tosin admires Ijames’ version because it tells a different kind of Black story from what we often see. “There’s a temptation in American culture to homogenize the Black experience,” he said, “to make it about only one thing, whether it’s poverty, or racism, or some kind of trauma.”
Fat Ham is more in line with the kind of story Tosin seeks out: “It shines a light on the quieter voices, unheard voices,” he said. We have long wondered whether Hamlet is gay, for instance; Fat Ham’s protagonist, Juicy, throws this door wide open. “He is a young Black queer kid who is countercultural in many ways,” Tosin said, “and who is feeling abused … and taken for granted by the people he loves most — yet trying to find a way to express himself, to be his full self.”
James Ijames (pronounced “imes”) pokes fun of Shakespeare’s tragic hysteria, while respecting the fundamental seriousness of the play’s themes. “At its core, the play is about how this Hamlet character … is meeting and undermining his family’s cycles of trauma and violence,” he told The New York Times in 2022, when Fat Ham became the first play to win a Pulitzer based on its script and on a streamed video. “It’s really about how he brings the rest of his family with him to the realization that they don’t have to continue these cycles of abuse and violence … that they can do something completely different with their lives.”
Beginning life as a streamed production by Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater in 2021, the play appeared in May 2022 at the off-Broadway Public Theatre, moving to Broadway in April 2023. “Fat Ham is a gloss on Hamlet,” wrote Jesse Green in The Times, “and the best kind of challenge to it, asking the same questions but coming up with different answers.”
In April 2024 it opened at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre, where Ernie Nolan, the Unicorn Theatre’s new artistic director, found it delightful. “That production was one of the most memorable nights at the theater I’ve had in quite a while,” Ernie said, “and one of the most diverse, eclectic audiences you can imagine. The communal experience of an audience following the emotional journey of that play — gasping at the surprises, laughing at the jokes, was amazing: We left the theater buzzing.”
Part of Ijames’ success here is in the way he has etched wholly original characters, even while making them resemble their Shakespearean counterparts. Juicy’s mother, Tedra (“a kind of Gertrude,” Ijames writes), is tired and cynical but unwavering in her love for her son; Opal (Ophelia) is proudly lesbian and thus unperturbed by Juicy’s indifference.
For his part, undergraduate Juicy is pretty certain of what he wants — college, a career, his mother’s love, and perhaps Larry (Laertes), who (as it turns out) is attracted to him, too. It may be that Fat Ham is neither tragedy nor comedy. “This is really a journey of self-discovery and acceptance,” Ernie said.
If Juicy hesitates in acting on his father’s call for revenge, it’s partly because he never had that great of a relationship with “Pap,” who habitually calls him “soft,” “pansy,” “girlie” — and worse. “He has been systematically belittled,” Tosin said, “for trying to be who he is, and for any expression that … is different from his father’s old-school, toxic-heterosexual, violence-and-toxic-masculinity-embracing life. So he feels like, Do I really want to do this, for a guy who treated me like crap?”
But duty continues to drive Juicy. “He’s torn,” Tosin said, “between three allegiances: to himself, to his mother, and an obligatory allegiance to his father. … That’s the challenge for him: ‘Where do I land in this, and who am I living for?’ ”
The ghost of his father continues to push the inevitability of violence, telling Juicy: “I really messed you up. … Well, my daddy messed me up, and you’re probably gonna mess your kid up.”
Fat Ham carries the dead-serious intent of causing us to think hard — about our prejudices, our stereotypes, our blind spots. While there is probably no hope for someone like Rev (the Claudius figure, a poster child for homophobia, played by the same actor as Pap), the play seeks assiduously to steer us toward greater empathy.
It is impossible not to think of the bard’s Hamlet here, and although no specific knowledge of the Shakespeare is required, the counterpoint between the two plays provides an additional spark of wit. Instead of a “play within a play,” for example, Juicy suggests a game of charades, which brings the revelations to a cliff’s edge just as precipitous as that in Hamlet.
“There is a lot of fun in those references, and there’s a lot of fulfillment of expectations and subversion of expectations,” Tosin said. We know there will be a ghost, but not that the ghost will appear “as a kind of ’70s, Saturday Night Fever version.”
For those who don’t know the original well, perhaps Fat Ham can motivate them to seek it out. At the same time, “this play is such a fun joyous roller-coaster that you don’t necessarily need to know Hamlet like the back of your hand,” Ernie said.
Tosin’s hope for the play “is that the audience sees a story that takes them out of their own ‘lens,’ out of their own POV, and allows them to appreciate the way that other people see the world. To see the world the way that this young queer Black kid sees the world — and to embolden them to want to support someone like him.”
The playwright has echoed this. “This play is for people who are looking for a new path, people who are trying to figure out how to talk to their family about difficult things, queer people who want to see their reflection, Black people who want to see their reflection, people who love Shakespeare, and folks who have never seen a Shakespeare play. It’s for everyone.”
Fat Ham stars Darrington Clark (Juicy), Teonna Wesley (Tedra), L Roi Hawkins (Rev/Pap), SyKnese Fields (Opal), Rashaad Hall (Larry), Nedra Dixon (Rabby), and Solomon Langley (Tio). For tickets call 816-531-7529 or go to unicorntheatre.org.
— By Paul Horsley
To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send an email to paul@kcindependent.com or find him on Facebook (paul.horsley.501) or X/Instagram (@phorsleycritic).
