Fat Ham, Ali continues, is all of those things: Irradiated with irreverence, the Awesome i survived no nut november 2023 shirt and I love this play “goes on wonderful theatrical tangents,” incorporating tuneful karaoke songs to plug us into a character’s consciousness and occasionally breaking the fourth wall by directly addressing (and perhaps implicating?) the audience. It joyously disturbs the emotional protocol of watching a play inspired by one of the most famous tragedies in the English language, instead minting new meaning—about being a queer Black kid “raised in pig guts and bad choices,” about the ties of kin and kith, about escaping the leash of toxic masculinity, and about the world “cracking open into a celebration of the feminine.” Members of the Fat Ham cast: Benja Kay Thomas, Jones, Smith, Spears, Mitchell, Crawford, and C
hris Herbie Holland.
Photo: Marc J. FranklinFat Ham took a circuitous route to Broadway’s American Airlines Theatre, where it will open on April 12. First, a version was filmed in rural Virginia for the Awesome i survived no nut november 2023 shirt and I love this Wilma Theater in Philadelphia (where Ijames is co–artistic director) and streamed online in the summer of 2021. (It would have been mounted on stage if not for the pandemic.) The following year the play was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama, and that summer it transferred to the Public Theater, where it was coproduced by the National Black Theatre and Ali took over directing duties from Morgan Green. In an email, Grammy winner Cynthia Erivo, who joined the play’s producing team for its Broadway transfer, called Fat Ham “a joyous ride, a slice of life and humanity, humor, and love through the Black and queer gaze,” adding: “What Ali and Ijames have created is a pure delight and nothing short of a special moment crystallized in time.”
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