You know that thing where your uncle has your dad killed and then your dad’s ghost pops up out of a cooler at the backyard barbecue to demand you avenge him by murdering his brother even while you’re dealing with feelings of alienation and just trying to pull yourself out of the whole mess by getting an HR degree from the University of Phoenix online?
That’s Juicy, a young, queer Black man searching for some meaning and joy in his life as he ducks the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in James Ijames’s Pulitzer-winning Fat Ham, a raucous reinvention of Hamlet now onstage at the Goodman.
The questions of claiming and embracing your identity, of navigating familial strife, of figuring out where your love and loyalty lie, those are all weighty and sometimes tragic. But, oh man is this production directed by Tyrone Phillips funny, from Ronald L. Conner’s zesty dual performance as the wrathful spirit of Pap and the usurping Rev who had his brother killed in prison, to the scene-snatching E. Faye Butler as family friend Rabby who gets off the best line of the night when she exclaims about Juicy, “He goes to school on a cell phone!”
And then there’s Juicy himself, the put-upon sad sack with a sly wit and a slow smile that sneaks up on you as you realize there’s a soulful seeker under all that deflated goth attitude. A soulful seeker who just might be able to help himself and those closest to him flip the Shakespearean script and seize a little happiness and fulfillment from the death grip of this mean old world.
As we watch this young man, played with humor, wisdom and subtlety by Trumane Alston, grapple with the idea of killing his uncle while wresting him from his mother’s embrace, Juicy transforms at first imperceptibly and then in a great whooshing rush from bit player in his own life to something of a philosopher prince pushing everyone around him to come to terms with who they really are and let their freak flags fly.
It’s quite an inversion of the source material, suggesting that nothing is truly inevitable and that we might be able to chart our own destiny if we have courage, wit and love enough to try.
Fat Ham runs through March 2 at the Goodman Theatre.
For a full roundup of reviews of this show, visit Theatre in Chicago.
Photo by the late, great Rich Hein
