Fat Ham

Or: Coldly Furnish Forth

Whatever else it is James Ijames’s queer, Black, rebellious take on Hamlet does not leave a body indifferent. Fat Ham, filmed by the Wilma, is a spry and evergreen thing that hugs its source material like a tango partner, but has a tiring love of spinning its own wheels and spanking its own posterior. Nevertheless, its a brilliant idea to have an awkward prince, in this case Juciy (Brennen S. Malone) son and heir to a long line of hog butchers and throat cutters, be tasked by the shade of his abusive Father to give another spin to the cycle of violence, and answers “Hell, no!”

Set in, and filmed about, the backyard of a rural Virginian home the camera chances after Juicy as he preps a wedding party for his mother Tedra (Kimberly S. Fairbanks) and his uncle Rev (Lindsay Smiling), while dodging the vengeful invective of his father’s ghost (Smiling again, as the poetically disparaging Pap). “Soft” and out of step with his church going, fast loving community, Juicy is a magnet for abuse and derision from his elders, prompted only by his chaotic cousin Tio (Anthony Martinez-Briggs) and Larry (Brandon J. Pierce) a local boy come back from the navy.

Malone’s Juicy projects the soft shrewdness that gives the play its best gleam. he frequently turns aside to the camera to offer advice (when his relatives weigh in, and contradict him to our faces, the action is smart but seldom carries the same weight. Malone’s Juicy recedes in contact with other characters, his manner diffident and vapors. But he can drive a line like a steal strike, in southern vernacular or Elizabethan meter. You cannot help but love him when gives us a side eye as Rev extols his secret Barbecuing technique, “It’s not about the sauce, it’s the rub!” “Aye,” Malone smiles, “There’s the rub.”

The problem (at least the problem for me) is the though the play is tight and witty and rich in flights of lyricism, it sometimes bites off more than it can chew and chokes. Tio’s contributions to the conversation (which Martinez-Briggs carries off in fine style) shifts the play into a faster and more frenetic gear than the story and speech around it. Similarly, though James tries to do better by Tedra than Shakespeare did by Gertrude, she still remains more of a sketch then a woman (“I wasn’t built to be alone.” she primly states as her soul reason to hop into matrimony with her husband’s brother a week after his murder. Mmmmmhm.) Similarly the lusty feud between Juicy and Larry (coming not from murdering the latter’s mother, ChurchwomanTM Rabby (Jennifer Kidwell), but from outing the latter to same, while supported in its catalyst, stays an unresolved mess, smoking and fizzling in the corner till the plays final moments (but then the arrival of a fabulous Drag-queen will always absolve a multitude of narrative sins).

Perhaps the flashes, the bits of spin that Fat Ham delights in may delight and appeal to others. To me they’re just extraneous gristle on what is otherwise a lean and succulent, melt on your tongue, play. The script doesn’t trust itself, or its audience, and corkscrews itself up with preening on its own rebelliousness. The neat and eloquent solution Ijames provides is immediately undercut by Juicy’s suggestion that the assembled guests murder each other because (jerking his head towards the camera, “It’s what they expect.” If only we could have skipped the pranks and gone on to the dance.