Studio Theatre: Fat Ham

 It has been really a wonderful theatre season in the DMV.  

Today was everything I imagined and more!  Today I went to Studio Theatre to see the Pulitzer Prize winning play by James Ijames "Fat Ham."  Based on Shakespeare's "Hamlet."  And that's really all that I knew about it--I mean, I've seen Hamlet a couple of times.  Fat Ham is the most interesting and at times hilarious homage to a Shakespeare play I have every seen.  It both turned the tale on its head AND selectively quotes the original with campy fidelity.  The actors to a person where amazing.  

Studio Theater spent the pandemic undergoing some 20 million dollar renovation and you could have fooled me.  The Mead theater was just a intimate (read squished in) as I last remembered it on my first and only other visit to the theater back on Thanksgiving weekend in 2016 to see "Straight White Men".  The major difference "SWM" was heading to Broadway, and "Fat Ham" is coming off of Broadway.  With 20 million dollars to spend you'd have thought they could have bought seats with a width of more than 16"--I'm not kidding here. I wedged myself into the seat and shared lateral flesh with the women on either side of me.

The show is pared down to 8 characters with the actor who plays the ghost of the patriarch, Pap, also playing his living brother, Rev.  Rev sweeps in and marries Pap's widow, Tedra less than a week after the funeral and the entire action is set at a post wedding celebration in the backyard of Tedra and her gay son, Juicy.  The role of Polonius is switched up into Rabby, Tedra's church going, Jesus Praising bestie.  Her children are Opal and Larry.  Larry is in the military and Opal is a rebellious lesbian who's too out there for any closets.  Finally there is Tio (read Horatio), Juicy's oldest and best friend.  Tio likes to toke and Tio likes to trip--and when he's tripping he becomes quite the enlightened philosopher.  Hi-jinx and a little violence ensues and in the end only that which is rotten in Denmark dies while everyone else devolves into a gay rave!  The grand finally is Larry dropping his marine uniform for a silver number with a bare midriff and a rising tiara of flowers with vale that would have made Carmen Miranda blush.  It was just so damn much fun I forgot about feeling like a sardine in can!

All of the actors were simply perfect.  I can't see singling anyone out, and the audience was absolutely interactive.  At one point when Larry and Juicy kiss, an African American woman sitting inches away from them in the front row (two rows down directly in front of me) said, "Oh, Larry, you be careful now."  I burst out laughing.  It was just that kind of a show.  The actors had the audience in the palms of their hands and the audience, in turn, had the character's backs.  What joy!

To my DMV friends, if you could only see one show this season--this is the one.

Two longtime friends, Juicy (Marquis D. Gibson) and Tio (Thomas Walter Booker) kicking back while decorating the backyard for a wedding reception for Juicy's moms.  Not a care in the world, not a ghost in sight...(cue record scratch!) Shit's about to happen!

The happy newly weds arrive!  Tedra (Tanesha Gary) and Rev (Greg Alverez Reid)--just a week after burying Tedra's first husband and Rev's brother, Pap.  Mmmmm, mmmm, mmmm, something is rotten in Denmark.  Denmark, South Carolina.

Everyone is celebrating except Juicy.  The ghost of his father has asked him to kill his uncle Rev.  What's a boy to do?

What's more annoying than a tense post-wedding reception?  Karaoke, of course!

And this is some serious shit karaoke!  After Tedra has her moment, Juicy steps up and sings Radio Head's "I'm a Creep" while everyone falls into a trance and he preforms (amazingly) for the audience.

And what's more obnoxious that karaoke?  Charades!!  It is the elders against the young 'ns in a ploy that replaces the play from Shakespeare's Hamlet in an effort to get a confirmation from Rev that his deeds killed Pap.  And Rabby (Kelli Blackwell) LOVES charades!

In another trance moment, Juicy performs the soliloquy from Hamlet with a glowing snow globe for poor Yorick's skull; "...a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times...."

Tedra comforts Juicy at the reality of his having to accept his uncle as his step-father.  He about to tell her the truth of Rev's involvement in Pap's death.

As the adults have retreated to sort themselves out, the young 'ns sit and ponder together: [L-R] Opal (Gaelyn D. Smith) wants to open a restaurant/shooting range to wit Tio comments "It tracks."; Juicy still struggles with his father's afterlife request, a father he wasn't close to when he was alive.  He asks, "What powers do the dead have over the living?"; Tio tells of buying his tennis shoes from a garage sale.  They belonged to Yorick, but he OD'ed on "needles and meth"; and Larry (Matthew Elijah Webb) remains stoic, still trapped in a world of fear over his sexuality.

In the scene before the climax, Tio shares a vision in which an armless gingerbread man gives him the best fellatio of his life---I guess you had to be there!  Then he reveals the true meaning of life to the wonder of Opal, Rabby and Juicy.  No actual gingerbread men were drowned in jizz in the making of this fantasy.