Review: FAT HAM at Riffe Center Studio One

Perhaps the true strength of a story is measured in the ways it can be retold.

In 1987, film director Fred Schepisi transformed playwright Edmond Rostand’s CYRANO DE BERGERAC (1897) into the romantic comedy “Roxanne.”

Schepisi took a couple of liberties with the original play. He changed the setting from 1700s Paris into a ski resort town in the 1980s; moved the action from the Hôtel de Bourgogne into a fire house; used tennis racquets instead of swords in battle scenes; and, just for good measure, allowed de Bergerac to get the girl in the end. But other than that, it is, essentially, the same story.

What Schepisi did pales in comparison to what playwright James Ijames did in FAT HAM, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was nominated for five Tony awards in 2022. The Contemporary Theatre of Ohio presents this David J. Glover-directed update of Shakespeare’s HAMLET March 6-23 at Studio One at the Riffe Center (77 S. High Street in downtown Columbus).

Ijames reinvented the Shakespearean tragedy into something far more accessible for modern-day audiences. Instead of a dark tale of murder and revenge set in a dreary Denmark castle, Ijames brilliantly updates it into a backyard barbeque, replete with a karaoke machine, a gas grill, and a game of charades. It takes HAMLET into areas in which the Bard probably couldn’t imagine: a frankness about what it means to “thine own self be true” even when that flies in the face of your family and friends.

Juicy (brilliantly portrayed by William Harrington) is a sensitive, gay black man who struggles to be himself under the repressive thumb of his family. Similarly to the Shakespearean tragedy, Juicy finds himself tearing down the pall of grief after the murder of his father (a solemn Brandon Anderson) to redecorate the backyard to celebrate the marriage of his mother Tedra (Anita Davis) to his uncle Rev (also played by Anderson).

Admist the party preparations, the ghost of Pap appears to Juicy’s stoner friend Tio (the uproarish Reese Anthony) out of a garbage bin, giving a whole new meaning to recycling: paper, plastics, and phantasms. When Tio tells Juicy about seeing his father, Juicy asks his friend if he can summon the ghost again. Tio retorts “What I look like? Miss Cleo?” 
Mirroring HAMLET, Pap eventually appears to Juicy and tells his son his stepdad murdered him. When his father pleads with his son for vengeance, Juicy responds, “I ain’t no avenger.”

Ijames’ script is filled with rich characters that mirror Shakespeare’s work. Davis’ Tedra is very much in the mother mold of HAMLET’S Gertrude. Like Gertrude, she marries her husband’s murderer and sides with him over her own son.

Having the same actor play both Pap and Rev is a masterstroke of Ijames. Anderson carries both characters with sneering force and shows how both characters are more the same than they are different.

Ijames makes illusions to the Bard’s work in the names of some of the other characters. Anthony’s Tio is a play on HAMLET’s Horatio. Tio delivers many of FAT HAM’s best lines and his drugged induced soliloquy on the meaning of life involving gingerbread men and fellatio is as disturbing as it is hilarious.

Serving as Ophelia and Laertes in FAT HAM are Opal (Tyla Daniel) and Larry (Jabari Ikenna Johnson). Daniel’s Opal is both soft enough to care about meeting her mother’s expectations and yet strong enough to be open about who she is with those in her inner circle. In that way, she is a contrast to HAMLET’s Ophelia, who tends to let things happen to her rather than making things happen.

Johnson’s Larry is held up as the virtuous, steely man’s man and yet when he is with Juicy, he displays a softer, gentler side. Unlike Laertes, he is not driven by rage or a desire to kill Hamlet.

It might be a bit of a stretch to say Rabby (a droll Patrica Wallace-Winbush) is a nod to HAMLET’s Polonius. Wallace-Winbush delivers up Rabby as a riotous church-crown wearing, judgment-spewing mother of Larry and Opal. Some see Polonius as a toxic gas bag or a rambler of wit and wisdom and one perhaps could draw that distant parallel to Rabby.

Ijames masterfully links the high culture of Shakespeare to pop culture. He transposes Hamlet’s famous suicidal speech -- “To be or not to be, that is the question … Thus conscience makes cowards of us all” -- with Juicy’s karaoke of Radiohead’s “Creep” – “Whatever makes you happy, whatever you want … I wish I was special/ But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo. What the hell am I doin' here?
I don't belong here.”

One of Ijames’ best allusions may be his revision of Act II Scene 2 in which Hamlet takes his stepfather to see a play about fratricide to invoke his guilt. In FAT HAM, it is changed to a game of charades. Even before the game begins, Juicy directly quotes HAMLET with a wink to the audience, “Perhaps the play’s the thing to catch the conscience of the king.” The game goes something like this: “Okay three words: Preacher … second word, kills … third word … um .. cook.” As her second husband flies into a rage, Tedra wonders aloud, “Is that even a book?’

While these lines of dialogue makes FAT HAM sound like a comedy (and rest assured Ijames’ script has moments of hilarity), the play is far from farce. It examines issues HAMLET didn’t dare to scratch.

THE BURDEN OF FAMILY EXPECTATIONS: FAT HAM explores what it truly means to be a family. When Juicy expresses reluctance to living up to his father’s expectations, Pap thunders, “We supposed to be one beating heart. You and me. You my son! You my namesake!”

Juicy wryly replies, “It’s amazing what fathers think they own of their sons just cause we share a name.” Clearly, there’s more to being family than sharing a name.

THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE: After his father’s death, Juicy is left to reconcile his father was a violent man. Pap went to jail for killing a chef because his breath stank and then was shanked in prison. Tio explains to Juicy the many broken branches in his family tree: “Your Pop went to jail, his Pop went to jail, his Pop went to jail, his Pop went to jail and what’s before that? Slavery.”

SEXUAL STEREOTYPES: Even families that can be marginalized by society can be divided against each other. Juicy is openly gay and because of that, he is told he’s soft and a sissy. He fights back by being who he is unashamedly. When Rev orders him to change out of his dark funerial clothing, Juicy exits and returns in another black t-shirt with the words “Momma’s boy” fashioned out of sequins.

FREEDOM TO BE WHO WE ARE, NOT WHO WE APPEAR TO BE: While Juicy is chastised for being who he is, at least the family is aware of where he stands.

Other members of his family aren’t so lucky. Opal is locked in the proverbial sexual closet and is forced into societal norms like wearing dresses by Rabby. Rev holds up Larry, a Marine who wears his dress uniform to a family picnic, as a “man’s man.” Yet Larry keeps his secrets locked away in his own dark cubby hole.

Ijames doesn’t turn HAMLET into a feel-good romantic comedy like Schepisi did with Rostand’s CYRANO DE BERGERAC. He did, however, create something powerful, poignant, and approachable … with a far smaller body count.

Photo credits: Kyle Long

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