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by James Ijames, directed by Philip Akin

Canadian Stage, Berkeley Street Theatre, Toronto

February 19-March 16, 2025

“I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo

What the hell am I doin’ here” (“Creep”, Radiohead)

Fat Ham is such an insubstantial play that it is hard to believe it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2022. The play by gay Black playwright James Ijames (pronounced “Imes”) had been nominated for five Tony Awards including Best Play but won none. With cartoonish characters and drab dialogue, it feels like a 30-minute parody of Hamlet that has been teased out to 90 minutes. This Canadian premiere boasts a fine cast who do their best, but there is no doubt that every member of the cast has played better roles in other plays.

The play is set in the present somewhere in the American South. Juicy (the Hamlet figure) and his friend Tio (i.e. Horatio) are setting things up for an outdoor barbecue party to celebrate the wedding of his uncle Rev (i.e. Claudius) and his mother Tedra (i.e. Gertrude). As in Shakespeare’s play Juicy is wearing all black because he is still in mourning for his recently deceased father Pap, Rev’s brother, and is not at all happy about his mother’s hasty wedding. Unlike Shakespeare’s play all the characters are Black Americans, and Juicy, Opal (i.e. Ophelia) and Larry (i.e. Laertes) are queer while Tio, who insists he is straight, has a long speech about accepting his gay fantasies.

As Juicy and Tio are getting ready, the ghost of Pap enters accidently pulling a sheet off the clothesline with his head which makes him look like the caricature of a ghost. Juicy has a far more extensive conversation with Pap than Shakespeare’s Hamlet does with Old Hamlet. As in Shakespeare Pap says that his brother is responsible for his murder and demands that Juicy avenge his death. Unlike Shakespeare we discover that Juicy never like Pap, who constantly belittled him and continues to do so even as he asks for revenge.

Juicy is placed in the same quandary as Shakespeare’s Hamlet of how to work himself up to kill his uncle, but unlike Shakespeare the whole question of justifying revenge is obviated when Rev dies by choking on a piece of meat. Ijames’s play ends with no other deaths.

Ijames gives Juicy soliloquies, two taken directly from Hamlet, but unlike Hamlet these are not staged as Juicy’s private meditations but as his direct address to the audience. The other characters seem to be aware that they are characters and that an audience is watching them but, for unknown reasons, Juicy is the only one who is able to see or speak to them.

The main question that arises is why Ijames uses Shakespeare’s play as a starting point when he abandons any pretense of following Shakespeare’s plot after his own equivalent to the bedroom scene in Shakespeare. Following that scene between Juicy and Tedra, the play is concerned primarily with Larry’s confession of his gayness to Juicy, Juicy’s outing of Larry to everyone including Larry’s mother Rabby (i.e. Polonius), Tio’s speech accepting his gay fantasies and Larry’s acceptance of himself.

The key difficulty with Fat Ham is that it seems to have no point. Unlike most riffs on classic plays, say Inua Ellams’s Three Sisters (2019), Ijames’s play sheds no light on Shakespeare’s play and Shakespeare’s play sheds no light on his. Some reviewers make much of Ijames’s play dealing with ending the cycle of inherited trauma. Unfortunately, this theme occurs in only one short passage in the play. Juicy asks Tio what he should do about the ghost’s demand and Tio says, “Your Pop went to jail, his Pop went to jail, his Pop went to jail, his Pop went to jail and what’s before that? – Slavery”. It would be great if Ijames actually did explore this important topic, but he does not. Having Rev drop dead without Juicy’s intervention prevents the exploration of inherited trauma along with the exploration of revenge.

What we have is a would-be comic sketch inspired by Hamlet that morphs into a would-be serious sketch about gay self-acceptance. Yet even this part of the play is drawn in the broadest strokes. Larry, who has become a Marine and appears at the party in uniform, out of nowhere tells Juicy that he is gay and wants to be “soft” like Juicy. Juicy’s thoughtless outing of Larry to Rabby ought to put an end to Larry’s friendship with Juicy but unaccountably does not. When Larry makes his next appearance as “gay” he is decked out as a drag queen, a radical change that Ijames means to provoke surprise and laughter. Is that really what being out should do?

The play is already slight but it has been padded with irrelevant material to increase its length. The most obvious example is the karaoke scene midway through the action. Tedra suggests karaoke will add to the fun and proceeds to sing “Tell It To My Heart” (1988) by Taylor Dane. I was sure someone would interrupt her, but no, Tedra sings the entire song. I thought that must be the end of the karaoke idea, but no Juicy is persuaded to take the mic and sings all of Radiohead’s “Creep” (1992). Why is Ijames taking up so much time in his play to quote songs by White singers and groups in their entirety?

The question comes up when Tio delivers a long speech about a dream he had about playing a video game featuring gingerbread men and snowballs. The game segues from violence to a gingerbread man to the gingerbread man kissing and fellating Tio and Tio deciding he does not mind. The speech comes out of nowhere and has no influence on the action so it is basically a long way to have Tio say he has nothing against gay people, except we already know that since he is Juicy’s best friend and knows Juicy is gay.

Juicy and Tio are the only characters Ijames grants any long speeches of any importance. Otherwise, the dialogue remains on the level of a not very entertaining sitcom. This is much lighter material than director Philp Akin has ever had to deal with before. His main strategy seems to be to have the actors replicate the general chaos of everyday interactions and have the chaotic developments of plot and character follow suit.

Peter Fernandes makes Juicy a sympathetic character, that is until Juicy’s odd betrayal of Larry shuts off our interest in Juicy. Given that we see Pap mock Juicy as much as Rev does, it’s hard to see why Juicy’s feels any loyalty to Pap or any compunction to fulfil his wishes. Fernandes primarily evokes an overall depression in Juicy that dampens all his feelings, out of which he periodically wakes up when someone suddenly yanks him into reality. Where Fernandes excels is in Juicy’s direct address to the audience where Fernandes adopts a more outgoing comic tone. Nevertheless, the impact of Fernandes’ audience interaction here is almost nothing compared to his riotous audience interaction in One Man Two Guvnors last year at the Shaw Festival.

Tony Ofori plays Tio as an ultra-laid-back guy. Ijames may characterize Tio as the voice of reason in the play but he also presents Tio high throughout which tends to undercut any of the important insights he makes. The parts for both Opal and Larry are severely underwritten. Larry says almost nothing until he suddenly comes out to Juicy, while Opal seems to repeat only two lines – “I like girls” and “I want to open a shooting range”. It is bizarre to see Tawiah M’Carthy , who was so eloquent in his solo show Obaaberima (2012), given so little to say as Larry, yet M’Carthy injects as much passion as possible into the pittance he has. The same situation applies to Virgilia Griffith as Opal. Griffith, who made such a moving Mona in Harlem Duet (2018), manages to suggest that Opal has a complex character despite the few words Ijames gives her.

As for the actors playing the older generation, David Alan Anderson plays both Pap and Rev, making Pap a more volatile figure that Rev, whose coldness toward Juicy may be even worse than Pap’s anger. Raven Dauda happily underlines all of Tedra’s tackiness and sensuality, but she does use the few serious lines Ijames gives Tedra to show that Tedra knows the negative way people perceive her though they should not judge her for needing a man to keep her loneliness at bay. Given that Opal and Larry’s mother Robby is the stand-in for Shakespeare’s Polonius, it is strange that Ijames does nothing to make play up the parallel except to reveal Robby as an enthusiastic church lady. Nehassaiu deGannes derives as much humour as she can from the role, even though she has played much meatier parts like the dangerous La Veuve last year in The House That Will Not Stand.

The two best moments in Fat Ham occur when Ijames decides to let Juicy quote directly from Shakespeare’s soliloquies for Hamlet. Fernandes performs these so well and with such understanding that they make returning to the superficiality of Ijames’s play almost painful. The thought that inevitable arises is why not mount a production of Hamlet with this cast playing the same roles. The setting could still be in the American South and the characters could still be middle-class. Hamlet, Laertes and Ophelia could still be gay. The destruction of the entire court by the end of the play would still make the point that revenge leads to an unending cycle of violence that only ends in mutual obliteration. You could even have karaoke if need be. At least, though, you would have a story compelling enough to hold your attention and characters complex enough to seem real.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Peter Fernandes as Juicy; Virgilia Griffith as Opal, Nehassaiu deGannes as Robby, Peter Fernandes as Juicy, David Alan Anderson as Rev, Tony Ofori as Tio and Raven Dauda as Tedra; Tawiah M’Carthy as Larry, Vergilia Griffith as Opal, Peter Fernandes as Juicy, Nehassaiu deGannes as Robby, Raven Dauda as Tedra and David Alan Anderson as Rev. © 2025 Dahlia Katz.

For tickets visit: www.canadianstage.com.