Adaptations of Shakespeare abound from West Side Story to Romanoff and Juliet to & Juliet. The composer of Hair wrote a musical adaptation of Two Gentlemen of Verona, Verdi crafted operas of Othello and Macbeth, and John Cassavetes starred in a terrific film called Tempest. There is an adaptation of Macbeth set in a donut shop in Scotland, Pennsylvania, and don’t forget Gary, the sequel to Titus Andronicus by Taylor Mac. San Francisco Playhouse has produced two by Shaina Taub – the wonderful musical adaptations of Twelfth Night and As You Like It. There are also many concept productions of Shakespeare plays where the plays are done as written but set in different times like Julius Caesar set in the Kennedy era or Romeo and Juliet set in the Middle East.
I often find both the adaptations and the concept productions frustrating, because the auteurs behind them fail to reconcile the differences in the world view of Elizabethan England and that of another era or culture. The Elizabethans believed that witches existed and that oracles could predict the future, that supernatural signs could be given to warn them or bless a course of action. When these scripts are forced into settings without coming to terms with the changes in our views of the world, their attempts at relevance fall flat and we wonder why we revive these plays by “old white men,” as one of the characters in Fat Ham remarks.
Bringing the story of Hamlet to a backyard barbecue at a Black family’s home in North Carolina may also seem like a stretch, and yet here is where the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames succeeds. Classic dramas of the past become myths for their time, and they endure because those myths continue to be relevant, continue to encapsulate truths about being human. They are stories we all “know,” in our blood and bones. They speak of who we “are.” Fat Ham looks at myths of revenge from Hamlet and says, we need to deconstruct this myth and make a new one about forgiveness and redemption. Fat Ham says this old myth of what it means to be a man needs to be blown up and replaced with a more inclusive one. Great playwrights are myth busters. They say, “this myth is not helpful to us. We need to destroy it and make another that can serve to bind our families and communities together.” Thus, in Fat Ham, we dispense with a myth of revenge and tragedy and serve up a new one of acceptance and joy.
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