Fat Ham Broadway Stars Will Reprise Performances in Geffen Playhouse Run

The Broadway cast of James Ijames’s Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy Fat Ham will reprise their performances on the West Coast during a run at the Geffen Playhouse, March 27-April 28.

Starring in the Geffen production, and reprising roles they originated at the Public Theater off-Broadway, are Marcel Spears as Juicy, Billy Eugene Jones as Rev/Pap, Benja Kay Thomas as Rabby, Nikki Crawford as.Tedra, Chris Herbie Holland as Tio, and Adrianna Mitchell as Opal. Rounding out the cast is Broadway understudy Matthew Elijah Webb as Larry.

Saheem Ali’s direction will be recreated for the Geffen by Sideeq Heard, with Darrell Grand Moultrie’s Broadway choreography restaged by Abdur-Rahim Jackson. Fat Ham has sets by Maruti Evans, costumes by Dominique Fawn Hill, lighting by Bradley King, sound by Mikaal Sulaiman, hair and wigs by Earon Chew Nealey, illusions by Skylar Fox, and fight direction by Lisa Kopitsky.

Nominated for five 2023 Tony Awards including Best Play, Fat Ham 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. 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.

The Broadway production of Fat Ham is also available as an audioplay from Audible.