The Royal Shakespeare Company will stage a third adaptation of Hamlet within six months when Fat Ham opens in Stratford-upon-Avon in mid-August. Set in America’s Deep South, the Pulitzer Prize winner might be a far cry from the original, but audiences will definitely be able to see the join - as the play’s writer, James Ijames, explains to What’s On...

Hamlet has always been one of the best known, most popular and most performed of Shakespeare’s plays - and as if to prove the point, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is set to complete a hat-trick of productions this calendar year.

Hot on the heels of director Rupert Goold’s terrific traditional version and extraordinary Radiohead mashup Hamlet Hail To The Thief comes Fat Ham, a hugely imaginative take on the Bard’s original by American playwright James Ijames.

In his rendering of the tale, ‘Ham’ refers to the pigs that main character Juicy’s family have been raising and barbecuing for generations on their farm in an unspecified southern state of America. Juicy, a Black, gay, Southern college kid, is desperate to get away and start a new life elsewhere, but his dreams are frozen when his mother marries his uncle, using his college tuition money to fund the ceremony. And then the ghost of his father turns up and tells him to kill his uncle.

The setup is familiar, but Fat Ham echoes as much as reinterprets the original. The softly spoken playwright is keen to acknowledge that the play is very much a love letter and homage to Shakespeare, rather than any sort of pastiche.

“I’ve just taken the elements and shaken them in a box,” he says. “When I was writing it, reading it in a writer’s group, and even when we were first doing it, I was like ‘I hope people don’t perceive this as a mockery of it’, because I am really leaning into the humour of human folly. It’s not jokes with setups and punchlines; it’s much more than that. It feels in line with how Shakespeare used humour in his plays.”

The judges for 2022’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama clearly agreed, giving it the main honour in a suitably life-changing moment for the native of North Carolina, who only learned he was in with a chance of winning on the day the prize was awarded.

“They announce the finalists and the winner all on the same day, and you get no heads-up - it’s really surreal. But it was tremendous. At the time, I was teaching at Philadelphia University [he’s about to become the new head of playwriting at Columbia]. I was in a faculty meeting, and my phone started to vibrate as people called to congratulate me.”

The play uniquely won the Pulitzer before being seen by a live audience, receiving its premiere via a streamed performance that was filmed at Philadelphia’s Wilma Theatre during the Covid pandemic.

“That was kinda novel [because] when it won, the audience was meeting it right at the same time. It’s hard to describe, but it felt like Champagne - it was such an exciting time, and there was so much happening. And then it just took off like wild fire.”

Fire no doubt fuelled by the award, which has seen the play become one of the most performed in the US ever since. It also attracted the attention of the RSC’s co-artistic directors, Tamara Harvey and Daniel Evans, who met James for what he describes as an “incredible conversation about Hamlet and our shared curiosity about the play”.

Despite having already programmed the aforementioned versions, the duo were quick to sign up for a third. James agrees with my suggestion that maybe it was less a case of worrying about overkill and more about providing a fascinating opportunity to witness the work in a variety of guises, since the play lends itself to just that.

“Exactly - it’s almost like you can’t get to the bottom of it. It’s one of the greatest plays written in the English language - you can’t get tired of it. There’s too much to think about it when you watch it; there’s too much to hear for the first time, or in a new way.

“I’ve pulled a single thread out of Hamlet - I want to explore cycles of violence in family, and we’re using this story. That’s a single thread; one element of that play. I think that’s why it can withstand that. I will get very tired of Romeo & Juliet, but there are times when I see or read Hamlet when I’m on his side, and times when I’m on his father’s side - you can avatar onto so many people in the play.”

In his version, James has intentionally avoided using the really well-known speeches from the original text, instead cherry-picking elements - “in Elizabethan tongue… it’s glorious and I love it” - for effect.

“I wanted there to be text, but I didn’t want to use the big speeches. It’s pretty spare on the literal Shakespeare - but when it shows up, it feels like it belongs.”

He also says his inspiration goes back to when he first read the play as a college student. He identified similarities in his own life, as well as seeing Hamlet “as a kind of Queer figure. In the capital Q idea of Queer - like he doesn’t fit”.

“I was cast in a scene in a truncated version of the play that a student was directing, and I kinda identified with him - there was something about his frustration with his family that sort of met with me, because I was coming out, figuring out my sexuality - so that was a tension point for me.”

Fat Ham reflects James’ ongoing intention to use his art to examine issues of identity and race - and the trauma and violence that often accompany them. Typically, though, he addresses the topics through humour and unlikely twists and settings - a strategy designed to sugar the pill as well as resonate with audiences. He hopes Fat Ham will appeal both to people familiar with Shakespeare’s original and complete newcomers, a combination that creates a unique dynamic in the theatre...

“Any time you’re messing with something that people know, you’re bringing both new and old to the work. What excites me about that is when those people sit in the audience together. You’ve got people there for the Shakespeare, and they’re really quite serious about it, and they come because that’s what they want to experience. But then there are also those who have heard that it makes audience members feel good. So those two people sitting side by side is the trick of the play - that’s the thing that makes what I call the collective intelligence of the audience sing.”

The RSC production is the play’s UK premiere. Not surprisingly James is beyond excited to be bringing it to the home of the Bard (“I hope I can soak up some of that Shakespearean thing while I’m there”), as well as see what British audiences make of it.

“I think they’ll be delighted because they know it so well, they can see where it diverges and converges, and where beats in Shakespeare’s Hamlet sit differently in my play. I hope it’s like a scavenger hunt!”
There’s also one key difference to the original tragedy - Fat Ham has an uplifting finale: “It ends in an uproarious way, so one of the things we want to do is give people permission to build to that. It’s gonna be exciting to watch, and I hope a fabulous experience for the audience.”

Fat Ham shows at the RSC’s Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, from Friday 15 August to Saturday 13 September

By Steve Adams