‘Fat Ham’: A backyard barbecue for the ages

By Rich Fahey

BOSTON – One man’s imagination can turn a more than 400-year-old Shakespearean tragedy into a backyard wedding barbecue to remember.

In an interview Playwright James Ijames explained he first read “Hamlet” at Atlanta’s Morehouse College, where he also performed in a production of the play. It was a huge factor when he decided to change his major to theater. But two future productions of the play he attended never spoke to him in a meaningful way, and it gave him pause.

“What if the characters looked and sounded like people I grew up with?” he wondered. “That would make me happy.”

That thought eventually begat the 2022 Pulitzer Prize winning play for drama. “Fat Ham,” a co-production of The Huntington, the Alliance Theatre of Atlanta, and the Front Porch Art Collective, now being performed in the Calderwood Pavilion of the Boston Center for the Arts through Oct. 29.

Here, “Hamlet” is kind of a loose template that Ijames used as part of his plot line and in creating his characters.

“Fat Ham” is set in a at backyard barbecue in a small North Carolina town being given to celebrate a wedding, It becomes a raucous, oft-hilarious and chaotic mix of tense confrontations and hairpin plot twists during 90 minutes of comedic conflict.

Marshall W. Mabry IV is the stand-in for Hamlet as Juicy. He is young, gay, a sensitive, intelligent soul mired in a funk not of his own creating. He didn’t have a particularly good relationship with his father Pap (James T. Alfred), who died in jail a week  before. His father, in turn, was in jail for a killing he committed.

Juicy is close to and protective  of his mother Tedra  (Ebony Marshall-Oliver), who has decided to marry her late husband’s brother, Rev (Alfred in a dual role), just a week after her husband’s funeral. And, as almost their first official act of their marriage, they have spent the money intended for Juicy’s online college on bathroom renovations. Suffice it to say Juicy’s relationship with his uncle and now step-father is not off to a good start.

Lau’rie Roach as Tio – aka Horatio in “Hamlet —  makes for a hilarious, scene-stealing  sidekick as he offers commentary on Juicy’s career choice – human resources – and Tedra’s decision to marry so quickly. Much later, he will describe a hilarious imaginary encounter with a gingerbread man.

Juicy is jolted when the ghost of Pap suddenly appears out of the backyard grill and tells Juicy that he was killed by Rev. He also commands Juicy to take up arms and avenge him.

Into the fray comes a trio of  family friends: Opal (Victoria Omoregie), or Ophelia in Shakespeare’s world, a fearless sort who is wearing a dress under protest and whose world view  is diametrically opposed to that of her mother, Rabby (Thomika Marie Bridwell), a  staunch Christian who is not shy about voicing her opinions.

Opal’s brother Larry, a childhood friend of Juicy’s, arrives in Marine dress blues, channeling – to a point – The Bard’s Laertes.  He is a stolid sort but deeply conflicted; there is something underneath just aching to get out.

A game of charades eventually fizzles out, but karaoke will eventually begin the truth-telling, especially when Juicy gets a chance to vocally  bare his soul.

Juicy can be seen at times holding what could be, if handled properly, a weapon that could be used to kill. But lurking in the background is the key question Where does it stop? His father killed and was killed. Should his father’s legacy become his own? Or is there a better way?

Instead of a tragedy, Ijames plots his own course as the characters wend their way to a much different ending than Shakespeare’s.

There are times when Juicy manages to interject short passages of actual dialogue from “Hamlet” into  the conversation, angering his mother.

“If you bring up that dead old white man one mo time… You act like he’s got all the answers.”

Director Stevie Walker-Webb, who directed “Ain’t no Mo” on Broadway last season, has ensured brisk pacing amidst the eventual chaos and under his guidance the cast seems to have found their own individual sweet spots in their roles.

“Fat Ham” is a tasty testament to a theme Shakespeare knew well: To thine own self be true.

“Fat Ham.” Play by James Ijames. Directed by Stevie Walker-Webb. Presented by The Huntington, in association with the Alliance Theatre and the Front Porch Arts Collective. At the Wimberly Theatre in the Calderwood Pavilion of the Boston Center for the Arts through Oct. 29. Huntingtontheatre.org