Fat Ham (Broadway)

Review of Fat Ham on Broadway

When Fat Ham was at the Public Theater, I tried way too hard to get tickets whenever I was in town, and failed.

So when I heard that it was opening up on Broadway and transferring, I was absolutely thrilled to have the chance to actually get to see it. Better yet when I mentioned it to my boss, she said that she had a subscription to Roundabout and they were offering Fat Ham as an option, and to let her know when I was in town and she’d take me for free.

So this is the story as to how I got to see the second preview of Fat Ham on Broadway, and it was a great way to end the night after seeing such a heavy hitter with Parade—another must-see show.

We knew nothing except that Fat Ham was loosely based on Hamlet, and while we didn’t come out of the show being absolutely wow-ed, it was still a good time. I wouldn’t recommend the center mezzanine seats we had—there are moments when the characters come in/out onto the orchestra, and there’s these weird bars that block some of your view when the characters move towards the front of the stage.

The ghost of Juicy’s father comes back to tell him his uncle had him murdered in jail.

Fat Ham is big on the jokes, and that shows in the main character’s name alone: he’s Juicy, very gay, and his father died a couple of weeks ago.

No one believes that his HR degree is going to be useful, especially because he’s getting it online on his phone, and honestly, it seems like he kind of just needs a hug at the beginning of the show. His friend Tio spots the ghost of his dead father first, and after he leaves, Juicy is confronted by his father.

He reveals that the man who stabbed him to death was contracted by Juicy’s uncle (his brother), and that Juicy needs to avenge him. There’s a barbecue theme going on here, since the family owns a BBQ joint, and his father specifically instructs Juicy to cut up his uncle, smoke him, and eat him.

I’m going to avoid spoilers in this, since it’s a pretty fun show with some twists. I won’t spoil those! But the rest of the show takes place at a barbecue where family friends are invited, secrets are exposed, and there’s a smidge of violence. And Shakespeare references only the young people understand.

That, of course, leaves Juicy in an ethical dilemma for the rest of the show. In ninety-five minutes (there’s no intermission), guests come to the party and while it gets super gay (some of the youngsters identity as LGBTQ+, which the older people, especially Juicy’s aggressive uncle slash new daddy, cannot understand), a lot of the show is Juicy struggling with not only his own identity and how it shows with the people around him, but also with this newfound task his father has slotted onto him. As Tio says, revenge is mad hard.

Anyways, the biggest draw of this show is the comedic humor.

Everyone around us was absolutely dying with laughter, but, honestly, I didn’t find a chunk of the jokes to be funny. I thought there were some really good moments where the playwright really gets you, but my boss and I agreed that we weren’t sold on the acting and delivery of some of these jokes.

Juicy’s actor, while he comes across as a mildly depressed young man trying to cope with the circumstances of his life, was someone we agreed could’ve been better at times.

I summed this show up later as a bit of a Generation Z fever dream. It can definitely be taken as a show written by a younger person by a lot of the references, and I’m glad it made it to Broadway. I think it was definitely worth seeing, but it wasn’t my favorite play in the world.

There are some musical moments sprinkled in here and there, as a karaoke machine is busted out. There are some really fun moments towards the end of the play, and that’s when I started getting more into the groove of the humor.

Granted, this was only second preview on Broadway, so things can improve. It’s definitely a plus in the realm of representation in my book, so I’m glad this kind of show exists. I will say that because this was a second preview, there were some off moments that were kind of mistakes.

My boss pointed them out to me later, and I didn’t notice at first, but the lighting was off in several scenes. Actors missed their marks, or the lighting people hadn’t figured out the shadows yet since characters wouldn’t be illuminated enough to be properly seen.

All in all, go see it if you’re interested. It was definitely fun!

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