Reviewed by:

• Fat Ham by James Ijames, and: White Girl in Danger by Michael R. Jackson
• Kevin Byrne

The overlapping New York runs of James Ijames’s Fat Ham and Michael R. Jackson’s White Girl in Danger brought to the fore some remarkable connections between the two acclaimed productions, which I had the good fortune to see on the same day. Each created dense theatrical landscapes through the appropriation of other texts and genres, using them to complicate and underline the stories they told. Fat Ham is modeled after Hamlet, and White Girl in Danger draws from daytime soap operas in its overall aesthetics and reliance on pastel. Shakespeare and the soaps are full of white stories and white problems, which makes it all the more intriguing when Black artists use them as fodder to tell their own tales. Both have enough cultural currency that their various signifier—skulls for the former, mysterious bruises for the latter—can be easily identified and lovingly remixed.

Marcel Spears (Juicy) and Billy Eugene Jones (Pap) in Fat Ham. (Photo: Joan Marcus.)

The production history of Fat Ham, from debuting as a streaming production during the pandemic to winning the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, made its arrival on Broadway even more joyous. The plot of the play unfolds in real time over the course of a particularly fraught wedding celebration. The central character is Juicy, whose mother has recently married his uncle after the sudden, violent death of his father. The setting is the backyard of the family home, and the play begins as Juicy organizes decorations for the party. In Saheem Ali’s production at the American Airlines Theatre, the helium balloons that bobbed around the stage indicated the [End Page 93] haste with which the party and the wedding were planned. In a lovely touch, they were festooned, bizarrely, with messages for birthdays, holidays, and get-well-soons. The upstage center of the backyard set was dominated by a large grill that ominously leaked smoke.

The ensemble of Fat Ham. (Photo: Joan Marcus.)

The show quickly set up the analogues with Hamlet, largely in terms of plot, character, and motivation, which then deepened and strained as the performance went on. Take, for example, the arrival of the father’s ghost, who demanded that Juicy exact revenge on the uncle for orchestrating his assassination. Murder the murderer—so far, so Shakespeare. But in their ensuing conversation, as Juicy expressed some hesitation over the act, the ghost snapped and lunged at him. Juicy’s defensive crouch encapsulated a well of trauma that word-lessly summed up the abusive dynamic between them and further complicated the need for paternal approval that is the supposed driving force of any Hamlet’s desire for revenge.

All the characters were richly drawn, sutured to a foil from the source text but with additional psychological complexities. The whole play is steeped in sex and sexuality, desire and touch. Juicy is gay, though fumbling and quiet about it. All the other family members know it without fully being able to mention or accept it, as denoted by the repeated, derisive characterization of Juicy as “soft.” This made Laertes stand-in Larry’s expression of his desire for Juicy midway through the show all the more surprising.

Fat Ham balanced its fidelity to the source text with an invitation to the audience to notice the parallels. I was particularly struck by the ways in which Ijames, who is queer and Black, takes the default whiteness of Shakespeare’s text and adds new specificit . The connections ranged from small to large, and were peppered throughout; early on, Juicy made an “ay, there’s the rub” joke about spices. When Larry arrived for the celebratory barbecue in his military dress uniform, the audience likely suspected that their interaction would lead to violence, as it does in...

 审阅者：

• 
  詹姆斯·伊詹姆斯 (James Ijames) 的《肥腿》和迈克尔·R·杰克逊 (Michael R. Jackson) 的《危险中的白人女孩》
•  凯文·伯恩

詹姆斯·伊詹姆斯（James Ijames）的《肥腿》（Fat Ham）和迈克尔·R·杰克逊（Michael R. Jackson）的《危险中的白人女孩》（White Girl in Danger）在纽约重叠上演，凸显了这两部广受好评的作品之间的一些非凡联系，我有幸在同一天看到了这两部作品。每个人都通过挪用其他文本和流派来创造密集的戏剧景观，利用它们使他们所讲述的故事复杂化和强调。 《胖腿》以《哈姆雷特》为蓝本，《危险中的白人女孩》的整体美学和对柔和色彩的依赖则借鉴了日间肥皂剧。莎士比亚和肥皂剧充满了白人故事和白人问题，当黑人艺术家用它们作为素材来讲述自己的故事时，这就更加有趣了。两者都有足够的文化流通性，以至于它们的各种能指——前者是头骨，后者是神秘的瘀伤——可以很容易地被识别并被精心地重新混合。

《肥腿》中的马塞尔·斯皮尔斯（Juicy）和比利·尤金·琼斯（Pap）。 （照片：琼·马库斯。）

《肥腿》从疫情期间以流媒体形式首次亮相，到获得 2022 年普利策戏剧奖的制作历程，让其登陆百老汇更加令人欢欣鼓舞。该剧的情节在一场特别令人担忧的婚礼庆典过程中实时展开。主角是朱西（Juicy），在父亲突然暴毙后，他的母亲最近嫁给了他的叔叔。故事发生在自家的后院，Juicy 为派对布置装饰时，戏剧开始了。在萨希姆·阿里 (Saheem Ali) 在美国航空剧院 (American Airlines Theatre) 演出的作品中，舞台周围飘浮的氦气球表明派对和婚礼的计划是匆忙的[完第 93 页]。它们以一种可爱的方式装饰着，奇怪的是，上面写着生日、节日和早日康复的信息。后院的后台中心是一个巨大的烤架，不祥地漏出烟雾。

胖火腿乐团。 （照片：琼·马库斯。）

该剧很快就在情节、人物和动机方面与《哈姆雷特》建立了相似之处，然后随着表演的进行而加深和紧张。以父亲鬼魂的到来为例，他要求多汁向叔叔策划暗杀事件进行报复。谋杀凶手——到目前为止，莎士比亚也是如此。但在他们随后的谈话中，当朱西对这一行为表示出一些犹豫时，鬼魂突然向他猛扑过来。多汁的防御性蹲伏封装了深深的创伤，无言地概括了他们之间的虐待动态，并进一步复杂化了对父亲认可的需求，而这被认为是哈姆雷特复仇欲望的驱动力。

所有的人物都画得很丰富，与源文本缝合在一起，但又具有额外的心理复杂性。整部剧充满了性与性、欲望与触摸。多汁是同性恋，尽管对此感到笨手笨脚和安静。所有其他家庭成员都知道这一点，但无法完全提及或接受这一点，正如 Juicy 反复被嘲笑的“软弱”特征所表明的那样。这让雷尔提斯替身拉里在节目中途表达对Juicy的渴望更加令人惊讶。

Fat Ham 平衡了其对源文本的忠实度，并邀请观众注意其中的相似之处。令我印象特别深刻的是，伊詹姆斯（Ijames）是一名酷儿和黑人，他采用了莎士比亚文本默认的白色并添加了新的细节。这些联系从小到大，遍布各处。早些时候，Juicy 就香料开了一个“哎呀，有麻烦”的笑话。当拉里穿着军装来到庆祝烧烤场时，观众可能怀疑他们的互动会导致暴力，就像在……