Full casting has been announced for the Geffen Playhouse production of James Ijames' Fat Ham. The Pulitzer Prize-winning play will run at the Los Angeles venue March 27—April 28. An official opening night is slated for April 4. Sideeq Heard, the associate director of the work's Broadway production, will direct the West Coast premiere.
Fat Ham reinvents Shakespeare's classic tragedy Hamlet moving the action to a Southern cookout. There, queer college kid Juicy has to grapple with identity questions, the ghost of his father, and a supernatural demand for vengeance. The choice laid before him? Whether to break or perpetuate cycles of trauma and violence.
The work earned a Tony nomination for its extended Broadway bow in 2023, which followed its extended and sold-out Off-Broadway debut via The Public Theater and National Black Theatre in 2022.
The cast will include Nikki Crawford as Tedra, Chris Herbie Holland as Tio, Billy Eugene Jones as Rev/Pap, Adrianna Mitchell as Opal, Marcel Spears as Juicy, Benja Kay Thomas as Rabby, and Matthew Elijah Webb as Larry. Crawford, Spears, and Jones are all reprising their roles from the Broadway production.
Fat Ham is produced in association with No Guarantees, Public Theater Productions & Rashad V. Chambers. The work made its world premiere in 2021 as a streaming production via Philadelphia's Wilma Theater, where Ijames serves as co-artistic director with Morgan Green, who directed the digital production.
For tickets and more information, visit here.