If you’ve ever felt Hamlet needs less gore and more glitterball, then tuck into Fat Ham. James Ijames’s play won a Pulitzer prize in 2022; set at a Southern backyard barbecue, its sensibility, Black and queer, does more than piggyback on Shakespeare’s tragedy.
This play’s pensive prince is Juicy (a winning Olisa Odele). His father has just died in prison, and the sun-bright party celebrates the hasty marriage of Juicy’s mom and uncle. Strapping but soft, in his Mama’s Boy T-shirt, Juicy’s moping irks his new stepdaddy (“think he some kinda philosopher-poet”).
Manning the grill is Uncle Rev: greedy, domineering, knows his way round a pig. A limber Sule Rimi plays Rev and the furious ghost of Juicy’s Dad, emerging from a gingham tablecloth to demand gut-spilling vengeance (“it’s a bit Old Testament,” winces Juicy). Hamlet is a tragedy of the young trapped in the ethics of their elders: Ijames lets them talk back. The ghost may crave justice, but was also a harsh father, mean husband and a murderer. Must Juicy live in his shadow?
Shakespeare’s characters are hemmed in by bad choices and narrow options. Here they dream big: this play’s Ophelia wants to open a shooting range, its Horatio ponders starting an OnlyFans account and Polonius becomes a clucking church lady with a past (Sandra Marvin, resplendent in mauve). What does Juicy want? He is still finding out.
Audiences seeking Shakespeare references will be in hog heaven: the conscience-catching play becomes a game of charades, and people keep catching Juicy mid-soliloquy and wonder what secrets he’s spilling. Ijames’s writing is full of charm and crackle, and there’s a bravery in his refusal to valorise tragedy or trundle through inherited trauma. Why must stories end in death? What if we lose the swords and instead do shots?
The play’s commitment to joy is elevated by the fun-times production (by Sideeq Heard, based on Saheem Ali’s original) and a terrific British cast (Jasmine Elcock’s glowering, kinetic Opal is a particular treat). There’s good booty work in the choreography by Darrell Grand Moultrie: never mind the hams, it’s all about the butts. Fat Ham isn’t a masterpiece but helps its characters find their way to happiness.
• At the Swan theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 13 September
