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Fat Ham

  • James Ijames
  • Full Length Play, Dramatic Comedy, Contemporary
  • 4M, 3F
  • ISBN: 9780573710384

In this delectably comic, Pulitzer Prize-winning reinvention of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, an uproarious family barbecue instigates a compelling examination of love and loss, pain and joy.

More information

Description

  • Full Length Play
  • Dramatic Comedy
  • 90 minutes

  • Time Period: Contemporary
  • Target Audience: Adult
  • Set Requirements: Unit Set/Multiple Settings
  • Cautions: Alcohol, Mild Adult Themes, Strong Language

  • Performance Group:
  • College Theatre / Student, Blackbox / Second Stage /Fringe Groups, Professional Theatre

  • Accolades:
  • Winner! Pulitzer Prize for Drama (2022)
    Winner! Obie Awards Special Citation (2023)
    Winner! Outer Critics Circle's John Gassner Award for New American Play (2023)
    Nominee! Five Tony Awards including Best Play (2023)
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames reinvents Shakespeare’s masterpiece with his new drama, a delectable comic tragedy. 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. It feels like a familiar story to Juicy, well-versed in Hamlet’s woes. What’s different is Juicy himself, a sensitive and self-aware young Black man trying to break the cycles of trauma and violence in service of his own liberation. From an uproarious family barbecue emerges a compelling examination of love and loss, pain and joy.
REVIEWS:

"Hot and sizzling... A raucous, flat-out hilarious comedy... Fat Ham is a revelation."

 The New York Times

"The funniest and most invigorating new show on Broadway."

 Variety

"A delicious and irresistible piece of work... Sweet, saucy, and very funny, Fat Ham has enough good-time disco sparkle to win over all but the grumpiest of spirits."

 Deadline

"Delicious, funny and piercingly moving, Fat Ham is a celebration that’s as thoughtful as it is irreverent."

 Daily Beast

"Stunning... James Ijames’s outstanding transformation of Shakespeare’s tragedy into a play about Black masculinity and queerness both echoes Hamlet and finds a language beyond it."

 The New York Times

"Cheeky, clever... Newly minted Pulitzer Prize winner James Ijames turns the revenge play on its proverbial ear."

 New York Stage Review

"[Ijames] translates the domestic and political conflict of Hamlet to the modern South where he grew up. The resulting queer, Black, middle-class lens is inherently irreverent and a goof, but also liberating."

 Observer

"The tragedy of Shakespeare is replaced by something witty, moving and life affirming... Instead of the tragedy-and-then-some of Hamlet, this is a play that emphasizes life, and specifically Black queer joy, while interrogating all the things that conspire to negate the life and feelings of the central character... The play is a compact 90 minutes, but it’s as dense and thoughtful as it is light on its feet and irreverent."

 Daily Beast

"Uproarious... an unalloyed comedy pleasure."

 Wall Street Journal

"We need plays like the Pulitzer-winning Fat Ham... It is all unabashedly entertaining and one of a spate of enticing new plays that are destined to be seen on stages across the country, offering fresh hope to theaters and theatergoers who are willing the industry back to full health... One of the pleasures of Fat Ham is its wry act of appropriation; there’s affection, not snark, in Ijames’s embrace of the canon so that the contemporary frictions among the reimagined characters propel the play winningly into social satire."

 The Washington Post

"Don’t let that Pulitzer Prize fool you. Fat Ham is the most fun you'll have at any play this Broadway season."

 The Wrap

Premiere Production: Fat Ham opened on Broadway at the American Airlines Theatre on April 12, 2023, after premiering off-Broadway at the Public Theater's Anspacher Theater on May 12, 2022. Directed by Saheem Ali, the production featured Nikki Crawford, Chris Herbie Holland, Billy Eugene Jones, Adrianna Mitchell, Calvin Leon Smith, Marcel Spears and Benja Kay Thomas.

Characters

  • Casting: 4M, 3F
  • Casting Attributes: Role(s) for Black Actor(s), Strong Role for Leading Man (Star Vehicle)

  • JUICY is thicc. 20-21, Black. He’s beautiful. He is lonely. He is smart. A kind of Hamlet.
    TEDRA is Juicy’s mother. 45-50, Black. She is a good mother. A kind of Gertrude.
    REV is Tedra's husband. 45-50, Black. Her dead ex-husband’s brother. Pigfarmer and pitmaster. Electric. A kind of Claudius. Same actor as PAP.
    OPAL is one of Juicy’s only friends. 19-20. Black. She loves Ham and worries about him. A kind of Ophelia.
    LARRY is a boy that is attracted to Juicy. 21-23. Black. A marine. Trying to heal from PTSD. Has a secret. Awkward. A kind of Laertes.
    RABBY is Larry and Opal’s mother. 40-45. Black. Tedra’s friend. Semi-churchy but honestly she just wanna drink and praise the Lord. A kind of Polonius.
    PAP is the Ghost of Juicy’s father. Appears 45ish. Black. Was in prison for killing someone cause their breath stank, til he got shanked on the way to dinner. A kind of Hamlet's Father. Same actor as REV.
    TIO is clever. 20-40. Black or Afro-Latinx. Juicy’s cousin. Oldest friend. A kind of Horatio.

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    Fat Ham Script This is optional. Order Now

    Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames reinvents Shakespeare’s masterpiece with his new drama, a delectable comic tragedy. 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. It feels like a familiar story to Juicy, well-versed in Hamlet’s woes. What’s different is Juicy himself, a sensitive and self-aware young Black man trying to break the cycles of trauma and violence in service of his own liberation. From an uproarious family barbecue emerges a compelling examination of love and loss, pain and joy.

    		$24.95

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