Risk-taking, rule-breaking, exuberant joie de playwriting won James Ijames the Pulitzer Prize for his contemporary comedic queer African-American take on Hamlet, Fat Ham, now blowing audiences’ minds at the Geffen Playhouse.

Like Shakespeare’s tormented Prince Of Denmark before him, plus-sized protagonist Juicy (Marcel Spears) has seen a ghost, the specter of his recently deceased father Pap (Billy Eugene Jones), shanked to death by a fellow inmate while serving a life sentence for murdering a man simply for having breath that “stank like his insides was decomposing.”

Now, only days after Pap’s demise, Juicy’s Uncle Rev (Jones doing double duty) has married his brother’s widow (Nikki Crawford as Juicy’s not particularly bereaved mother Tedra), nuptials being celebrated today in the family back yard somewhere in or around North Carolina.

No wonder Pap’s ghost is pissed, and insistent that his son “catch that hog brother of mine by the snout and gut that mother fucker,” something easier conceived of than done by a “girly ass puddle of spit” (Pap’s words, not mine) like Juicy.

Joining today’s festive backyard barbecue are Juicy’s childhood friends Opal (Adrianna Mitchell), who likes girls as much as Juicy likes boys; her U.S. Marine brother Larry (Matthew Elijah Webb), whom Juicy has longed for and lusted after since they were kids; their church-lady mama Rabby (Benja Kay Thomas); and Juicy’s perpetually stoned cousin Tio (Chris Herbie Holland), stand-ins for Ophelia, Laertes, Polonius, and Horatio.

I must confess to not having taken to Fat Ham as quickly as many in the audience appeared to, as much as anything because too much of Ijames’ dialog flew right past me due to a combination of high-volume shouting and North Carolina black slang.

Thankfully, however, that changed about halfway through when playwright Ijames’s took the first of a number of tone-switching, genre-bending chances that blew me away.

A karaoke machine gets brought out so that Crawford’s Tedra can showoff disco diva pipes (and moves) to Crystal Waters’ “100% Pure Love” and Juicy can follow that with an angsty take on Radiohead’s “Creep.”

Not long after, Juicy interrupts a game of charades to recite Hamlet’s “The play’s the thing” soliloquy word for word, a dark, dramatic tonal shift that turns sweet and tender when Juicy and Larry finally get to spend a moment alone.

And just wait until a very stoned Teo returns with a hilariously hallucinatory, self-revelatory monolog of his own, after which Fat Ham turns deliciously meta, after which one of the characters returns to end the evening on the most celebratory of notes, a grand finale likely to have you dancing in your seat.

No wonder Fat Ham took New York by storm. No wonder James Ijames’ won the Pulitzer Prize committee over with its outrageous and ultimately winning charms.

I do think it’s fair to question whether a 100% New York import is the best way for Terell Alvin McCraney to begin the artistic directorship of a Los Angeles regional theater, but there’s also something to be said for bringing Fat Ham’s original Broadway cast and production design to Westwood.

And I can’t help but rave about Spears’s irrepressibly irresistible Drama League Award-nominated star turn as Juicy, Crawford’s absolutely fabulous Tony-nominated featured performance as Tedra, and a supporting cast that’s on fire from start to finish under Sideeq Heard’s exhilarating direction (taking over for Tony-nominated original Broadway director Saheem Ali).

Kudos too to the Tony-nominated design contributions of Dominique Fawn Hill (costumes) and Bradley Hill (lighting) and the rest of the Broadway design team, with a special shoutout to Skylar Fox for the most mind-blowing of illusion designs.

Phyllis Schuringa, CSA, is casting director. Jasmine Ashanti, Armand Fields, Ethan Henry, Jarvis B. Manning, Jr., and April Nixon are understudies. Alyssa Escalante is production stage manager and Lauren Buangan is assistant stage manager.

I may not have warmed to Fat Ham quite as quickly as I’d have wished, but late to the game or not, I can’t help but cheer James Ijames’s exuberant celebration of living one’s life without apology or regrets.

Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. Through May 11. Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays at 8:00, Saturdays at 3:00 and 8:00. Sundays at 2:00 and 7:00.
www.geffenplayhouse.com

–Steven Stanley
April 5, 2024
Photos: Jeff Lorch

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Tags: Geffen Playhouse, James Ijames, Los Angeles Theater Review