"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?"
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"5/5 Stars! The outlines of James Ijames's delicious riff on 'Hamlet' are Shakespearean, but the point and the punch lines—and most of the poetry—are the playwright's own...'Fat Ham' keeps you cackling so consistently that the play's sudden acts of cruelty land like punches in the gut...Director Saheem Ali makes sure every laugh lands and that the broad performances never slip into stereotype."
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"The author also lends his own distinct point of view for his contemporary update. This slice of life leans hard into comedy, not tragedy, as it ponders big things that matter: personal identity, sexuality, transparency, living out loud."
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"Ijames and Ali create a magnificently silly farce-climax, followed by a sublimely glittery reality-breaking denouement. And between these two sequences came my favorite moment. After the peak of the action, when the characters realize that the rules of dramaturgy do not need to apply to them, they relinquish their strenuously noisy performances and just talk."
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"On its own terms, the play is an unalloyed pleasure: clever in its allusions to and occasional modest borrowings from Shakespeare’s mighty drama, frank and funny in its depiction of a family in the throes of transition, and acted with infectious exuberance."
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"Once you get past the sitcommy outlines of the project, the uniqueness of Ijames’s voice and his critique of genre becomes more apparent and pleasurable. He translates the domestic and political conflict of 'Hamlet' to the modern South where he grew up. The resulting queer, Black, middle-class lens is inherently irreverent and a goof, but also liberating."
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"Unabashedly entertaining and one of a spate of enticing new plays that are destined to be seen on stages across the country, offering fresh hope to theaters and theatergoers who are willing the industry back to full health."
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"In Ijames's hands, Shakespeare's text about a brooding, fake-mad, mother-obsessed, father-avenging prince of Denmark becomes a play celebrating Blackness, specifically radical Black queer softness.'"
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