Fat Ham at VSC opens this week

Coming Out to the Barbecue

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Think your family’s crazy? Meet Juicy, a young, Black, queer man whose family is on his last nerve. There’s his mother, who remarried just one week after her husband—Juicy’s dad—was murdered in prison. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she married the dead man’s brother. And if THAT wasn’t bad enough, the whole family has now gathered to celebrate the nuptials with a backyard barbecue, where secrets simmer alongside the sauce. And if THAT wasn’t bad enough, there’s an uninvited guest—the ghost of Juicy’s dad, who wants Juicy to avenge his murder…..

That’s the story of Fat Ham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning hit comedy that got rave reviews on Broadway and is coming to Norfolk’s Wells Theatre in a new Virginia Stage Company production. And if it sounds strangely familiar? It’s also the story of Hamlet, which was the inspiration for playwright James Ijames’s groundbreaking comedy.

There’s laughter throughout Fat Ham, but there’s also poignancy and healing. As The New York Times put it, “For all that Ijames dismantles in Shakespeare’s original text, he builds it back up into something that’s more — more tragic but also more joyous, more comedic, more political, more contemporary. “To be or not to be” becomes a different kind of existential query. It’s not a question of life or death, but of who we can decide to be in a world that tries to define that for us: Can you be soft? Can you be queer? Can you be brave? Can you be honest?”

WANT TO GO? Fat Ham runs January 29-February 16 at the Wells Theatre. Tickets are on sale online at vastage.org, by phone at 757-627-1234, or in person (Monday0-Friday, 10am to 5pm) at the Wells Theatre, 108 E. Tazewell St., Norfolk.

For a calendar of Fat Ham performances and news of other upcoming Virginia Stage Company plays, visit vastage.org.