Fat Ham
The Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon
⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑

THE RSC directors are to be complimented on bringing this multi-prize-winning black US play to Stratford. James Ijames’ reimagining of Hamlet is a triumph in many and varied ways. First of all it is hugely entertaining, brilliantly performed and hugely inventive.

Perhaps the only visual similarity between Shakespeare’s tragic prince and Juicy, the depressed son of a murdered pork butcher in a southern black homestead, is that he is fat, if not noticeably “scant of breath” as the Bard, if not modern directors, would have him.

However, he finds himself in a similar situation, when his father’s ghost appears to inform him that his uncle, about to marry his mother, was his murderer and of course to demand that his reluctant son avenge the deed.

Juicy’s struggle to avoid this duty is the first of a number of escape themes the play explores.

As the playwright explains in his programme note, his is one of a number of current examples to move away from the conventional theatrical treatment of black theatre based on suffered injustice within Western white society. In this family play the problems suffered by the younger generation are those imposed by family tradition.

As a young gay student working online for a degree in human resources, he is expected to follow in the family pork butchering business, while his friend Opal, “a kind of Ophelia” as Ijames calls her, likes girls but reluctantly goes along to her mother’s expectations of a daughter, and her marine brother Larry, secretly drawn to Juicy, is equally frustrated.

The play also breaks free of the fourth wall theatre conventions with characters directly addressing the audience at key moments, consciously acknowledging the debt to Shakespeare, as Juicy slips into Hamlet’s soliloquys and, hilariously, Tedra, his very sexy mother, defensively insisting that Juicy tells us, who “Think I’m trashy... how much of a son of a bitch your daddy was.”

What is, in its own way, as serious a work as Shakespeare’s great tragedy, Fat Ham is played out as a joyous comedy, finding a valid place for both karaoke and charades, the latter mirroring Hamlet’s critical play-within-a-play. Olisa Odele’s Juicy leads a cast clearly enjoy themselves as much as their audience do, with outstanding performances from Andi Osho’s Tedra and Sule Rimi doubling as Juicy’s father’s ghost and Rev, his bullying step-father.

It is impossible to be sure whether the praise for this splendidly directed show is owing to Sahim Ali’s original New York’s Public Theatre production but, whatever, Sideeq Ali’s Swan direction weaves the naturalistic and pseudo realistic styles seamlessly.

Initial warning — as the dialogue is AAE (African-American English), and the uninitiated may find themselves with some difficulties but then, just as with Shakespeare’s language, context and good acting conveys meaning..

Runs until September 13. Box office: 0789 333-111, rsc.org.uk.