Pulitzer Winner Fat Ham Will Come to Broadway in Spring 2023
(© Joan Marcus)
The Public Theater and the National Black Theatre will transfer Saheem Ali's production of Fat Ham by James Ijames to the American Airlines Theatre this spring. Performances begin March 21, with opening night set for April 12. The run is scheduled to conclude on June 25.
The Broadway run will include original cast members Marcel Spears as Juicy, Billy Eugene Jones as Rev/Pap, Benja Kay Thomas as Rabby, Nikki Crawford as. Tedra, Chris Herbie Holland as Tio, Adrianna Mitchell as Opal, and Calvin Leon Smith as Larry. Ali's production has sets by Maruti Evans, costumes by Dominique Fawn Hill, lighting by Bradley King, sound by Mikaal Sulaiman, choreography by Darrel Grand Moultrie, hair and wigs by Earon Chew Nealey, and illusions by Skylar Fox.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy is a riff on Hamlet, set at a backyard cookout, and following a queer, Southern kid who is visited by the ghost of his father demanding his son avenge his murder. While running at the American Airlines Theatre, Fat Ham is not a Roundabout Theatre Company production.
In our review of the Public Theater production, our critic said "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." Read the full review here.
