WHRO: "Fat Ham," a delectable play with sides of humor and heart, at Wells Theatre through Sunday

WHRO | By Kate Nowak

Published February 10, 2025

The Pulitzer-Prize-winning play reimagines Shakespeare's tragedy at a Southern family barbecue.

“Fat Ham,” by James Ijames, is a modern take on Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and uses biting humor, absurdly big personalities and heart to explore familial tensions and cultural expectations in the context of a Southern barbecue.

The Pulitzer-prize-winning show, produced by the Virginia Stage Co., features Juicy, our modern Hamlet, who grapples with what it means to be a young queer Black man rejecting the violent and hardened examples of manhood he’s always known.

Juicy has planned a party to celebrate his mother’s recent wedding. The nuptials, however, have caused a stir: His mother married shortly after her husband was killed. And she’s married her late husband’s brother. The ghost of Juicy’s father appears, telling Juicy to avenge his death.

“ 'Hamlet,' but a Black barbecue, is intriguing and funny,” said Jerrell Henderson, the show’s director. He said that though the characters and scenes can be outlandish, so is the source material.

“You can go through 'Hamlet' and buy everything that happens,” he said, "but when violence intersects with karaoke, intimate family drama and soul food, ‘Can you buy that?’

“The lives of African Americans throughout the course of our time in this country have been riddled with absurdity that we have had to grapple with simply because what else are you gonna do?” Henderson said.

The small cast brings depth and reality to their characters, which shines through the ridiculous quirks, dirty jokes and musical theatrics.

“They are characters,” Henderson said, “but they have heart.”

The play explores heavy themes and realities, but the large dose of comedy helps the medicine go down.

“Satire is humor with a bite … it’s got some darkness in it,” Henderson said, “but if you can laugh at it, it makes it easier to embrace.”

As a lifelong fan of Shakespeare, Henderson said “Hamlet” is a work steeped in rich and universal human experiences and emotion, which makes it ripe to be reworked into a modern context.

“That’s what we as artists do,” he said, “we reinterpret.”

Henderson said he is reevaluating what hope means to him with the current political landscape, pending environmental crises and cultural divides, but he thinks the ending of “Fat Ham” is a more hopeful alternative to the tragedy of “Hamlet.”

“Before we can move forward, we gotta unlearn,” Henderson said about the generational and cultural scars explored in the play. "But it’s possible to progress. We can do it; it has happened in American history. What if we reimagined our world?”

"Fat Ham" cast member Janae Thompson is a member of WHRO's Emerging Leaders Board. WHRO's advisory boards do not make editorial decisions.

"Fat Ham" plays through Sunday at the Wells Theatre, 108 E. Tazewell St. Tickets and show times are available at vastage.org.

Review: A merry little Christmas mash-up in Virginia Stage Company’s ‘A Sherlock Carol’

By Paige Laws

The humbug is afoot!

You’d better check your Christmas stockings for Easter eggs, theater parlance for referencing one play in another.

The Virginia Stage Co. has produced Mark Shanahan’s version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” — “A Merry Little Christmas Carol” — since 2021. Shanahan has also written a sequel, “A Sherlock Carol.” His sometimes sweet, sometimes silly, but always clever sequel is based on Dickens’ classic but mashed up with A. Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (1892). Confused yet? Fear not.

The shows are running in rep, meaning they are being performed at different times in the same weeks (“A Merry Little Christmas Carol” runs through Dec. 23) with the same set and, mostly, the same cast.

It’s, at first, a most unlikely sounding combo — Dickens and Doyle — but Shanahan makes it make marvelous sense. Scrooge (especially before his Christmas redemption) and Sherlock share one overwhelming character trait: narcissism. Think of it as “The Miser and the Analyzer: A Tale of Two Narcissists.” (Note that critics love hiding Easter eggs, too.) Dickens published “Carol” in 1843 and “A Tale of Two Cities” in 1859. Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes works span 1887 to 1927.

What is afoot in London, 1894, the setting for “A Sherlock Carol”?

Well, the play’s first lines are “Moriarty is dead to begin with. Moriarity is dead.” Sound familiar? Well, the beginning of Dickens’ “Carol” is “Marley was dead: to begin with.” Marley was Scrooge’s long-dead partner, who comes in ghostly form to save Scrooge’s soul. The similar-sounding Moriarty is Holmes’ longtime nemesis, the “Napoleon of Crime,” recently killed in a struggle with Holmes at Reichenbach Falls. But our Holmes here is still haunted by the ghost of Moriarity. He’s so obsessed that Holmes thinks he still sees him fleeing around corners. The play begins with Holmes in a downward spiral of depression, alienated from his only friend Dr. Watson (now happily married). Things look bleak for the world’s greatest detective.

Beatty Barnes, the resilient stand-up comic and tragedian, plays Scrooge in both. The other mostly Equity main cast double also (except Scott Wichmann playing Sherlock Holmes).  Tiny Tim is played by a child in “A Merry Little Christmas Carol,” but is an adult in “A Sherlock Carol” since it’s set two decades later. But didn’t you always wonder what would become of Tiny Tim? Now you’ll know! He becomes a slightly limping Dr. Tim Cratchit, head of a struggling children’s home and hospital.

The doubling, tripling and quadrupling of roles, within and among the plays, is possible because of conventions of story theater (or Epic theater, for loyal Brechtians). Characters engage with one another within the world of the play but also directly address the audience.

The fun is, of course, in recognizing the parallels between two characters’ lives in an adventure designed for them. The similarities and differences ricochet off one another. The more you know of the two “old” characters, the more you’ll try vicariously to save them — from themselves. The audience becomes a vital part of the process by wanting a good “future” for our fictitious friends and dreading their destruction which would equal an attack on our great literary canon.

A less charitable way to view unusual adaptations of the classics is to consider them as a kind of author hacking. Kate Hamill (author of the VSC’s recent “Dracula, A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really”) can be seen as a hacker of Bram Stoker and, often, Jane Austen. Shanahan can be seen as a hacker of Dickens and Doyle.

But, in this case, the hack is so ingenious, so wry, so self-conscious of its “invasive” moves that it works. It entertains. It uplifts rather than denigrates its precious classic sources. Dickens and Doyle are tough enough to take this sort of ribbing. It’s almost like a Great Authors’ roast. The more you know and love your Dickens and Doyle, the more you should appreciate this tribute. And, if you don’t know much about them, you’ll learn more.

Ideally, see both shows, but, at least, see the newer of the two. Remember to take along your Easter basket.

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu.

Read the Full Interview Here at The Virginian-Pilot Online

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If you go

When: Various dates through Dec. 29

Where: The Wells Theatre, 108 E. Tazewell St., Norfolk

Tickets: Start at $15

Details: 757-627-1234, vastage.org