Juicy, the Hamlet character (Marcel Spears), is a queer, fat Black college student, studying Human Resources at an online college. Juicy with his mother Tedra The Rev with his deceased brother’s wife Tedra The staging by director Saheem Ali at the Public Theater, in a co-production with the National Black Theater, brings out both what’s most entertaining and most serious about the script, thanks to a great cast and a fine design, with just the right amount of magic - enough to make you want to overlook the play’s shortcomings. Its only previous production, by Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater (where Ijames is co-artistic director) was online during the pandemic. So it’s best not to dwell on “Fat Ham” having won a Pulitzer let’s just consider the award terrific marketing for the first ever New York stage production of this play – in fact, the first in-person stage production of it anywhere.
As I point out in my guide to theater awards, the Pulitzers have a spotty record for recognizing work that endures. Some may wonder: Is “Fat Ham” on a par with Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” or Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie,” or Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible?” Actually, none of those plays, now understood to be masterpieces of the American theater, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Taking place during a Black family’s backyard barbecue in the American South, James Ijames’s play is a sometimes raunchy, sometimes pointed, largely freewheeling comedy, whose characters Karaoke to pop dance hits watch porn and get high come out of the closet. ‘Fat Ham,” this year’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, which opened tonight at the Public Theater, is inspired by “Hamlet,” but it parts ways with the Bard, and not just because of all the partying.