I first heard about the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fat Ham back in March, from my friend and theatre critic Cathy Hammer, who recommended it based on my love of Shakespeare, my appreciation for modern retellings of familiar stories, and—I presume—a desire to highlight underrepresented creators making waves in the overwhelmingly white theatre establishment.

I missed it when it came to the San Francisco Playhouse, but learned recently there was an Audible Original Production—basically an audio play, featuring the original performers from the 2022–23 Off-Broadway and Broadway runs—available for free with my Audible Premium Plus membership.

Had I not otherwise heard about it, Audible’s blurb would not have inspired a listen:

The Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times Critic’s Pick that served Broadway “raucous comedy and nonstop pleasure” has made its way home to Audible. Juicy is a queer, Southern college kid already grappling with some serious questions of identity when the ghost of his father shows up in their backyard, demanding that Juicy avenge his murder. But here’s the rub! Revenge doesn’t come easy to Juicy, a sensitive and self-aware young Black man in search of his own happiness and liberation.

I mean, OK? That description doesn’t even begin to capture the inventiveness of the piece, which, at its core, is a reimagining of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but goes well beyond its “murder most foul” origins. This is most definitely Not Shakespeare.

For one, it drips with distinct Southern Blackness (drawls, sass, and queerness in spades), centering its modern-day North Carolinian setting at a cookout in celebration of Juicy’s mother’s recent wedding to his uncle—not a week after his father’s murder, ordered by said uncle—with slow-cooked pork substituting for Hamlet’s “funeral bak’d meats” which “did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.”

For another, it’s laugh-out-loud funny. There were several moments I guffawed, sometimes in recognition, others in shock. Naveen Kumar calls it in his 2023 Variety review “a total gas — the funniest and most invigorating new show on Broadway.” And while it’s often hilarious, it’s also steeped in pathos and melancholy, and at times vibrates with barely contained fury—the tragedy and violence of the source material remains ever-present.

Fat Ham, though, isn’t a beat-for-beat reskinning of Hamlet. It uses the play’s familiarity as a springboard to explore the possibility of an outcome other than (spoiler for a 400-year-old play) the death of almost every major character. Kumar, again:

“Fat Ham” recasts its source material to imagine what Shakespeare did not — how people might overcome circumstances, expectations and their own demons to forge new paths through life.

Jesse Green calls it a “gloss” in his The New York Times review (gift link)—

[…] and the best kind of challenge to it, asking the same questions but coming up with different answers.

This “gloss” allows for moments of cleverness. For example, several character names are artfully transformed: Juicy’s mother is Tedra, rather than Gertrude; his best friend is Tio (Horatio); Opal and Larry are the brother-and-sister duo Ophelia and Laertes. Juicy also recites Hamlet’s “what a piece of work is a man” after Larry unexpectedly comes on to him, and Hamlet’s play-within-a-play is replaced by an unsubtle game of charades (complete with a fourth-wall-breaking recitation of “the play’s the thing” wherein Juicy attempts to “catch the conscience of the king”—or rather, preacher).

I went into Fat Ham with few expectations and came out wanting to immediately experience it again (which, at a brisk 95 minutes, was not a burden). I found it joyous and jarring in equal measure, inducing some whiplash as it careened between thoughtful rumination and acidic remonstration. (A sudden outbreak of karaoke was especially incongruous, and yet it managed to work, as emotional outbursts on Broadway often do.)

Indeed, right up to the final moments, I was unsure whether or not there’d be bloody bodies bestrewing the barbecue. Lester Fabian Brathwaite in Entertainment Weekly described it as “probably the most delightful the story of the Danish prince has ever been.” I’m inclined to agree.

The Audible production is effectively a “cast album,” and like many cast albums, much nuance is undoubtedly lost from only hearing the performers’ voices, without the benefit of their body language and facial expressions—not to mention the absence of staging. Nevertheless, I found Fat Ham delightfully engrossing. Regardless of your familiarity with Shakespeare’s source material, I recommend Fat Ham highly.

(I think Shakespeare, too, would have thoroughly appreciated this retelling of his most famous story, considering the stiff upper lip productions we’re all familiar with do not properly represent the bawdy Bard. Not to mention, the American Southern accent may well be closer to what Shakespeare sounded like 400 years ago.)

Reviews

As I am not a theatre or (audio) book reviewer, I recommend reading an actual review of Fat Ham to get a better sense of the play:

• Naveen Kumar, Variety: “James Ijames’ Pulitzer-Winning ‘Hamlet’ Riff Is a Broadway Feast”
• Jesse Green, The New York Times: “Skewering Masculinity, in a Hot and Sizzling ‘Fat Ham’”
• Lester Fabian Brathwaite, Entertainment Weekly: “The juiciest parts of Hamlet smothered in comedy and pathos”
• Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter: “A Defiant Queer Riff on ‘Hamlet’ Makes a Dazzling Broadway Debut”