Revenge is Mad Hard

In April of 2021, a small theatre in Philadelphia took a big risk: The Wilma premiered a new play called Fat Ham by a then-almost-unknown playwright, James Ijames. Fat Ham reconfigures the story of Hamlet through the lens of a family barbeque in the American South. In Ijames play, Shakespeare s protagonist becomes a fat, queer, Black man named Juicy. Juicy s mother has just married his uncle in the wake of his father s murder and Juicy himself is still dealing with grief about these events ...