As soon as the cancellation of “Fat Ham” was announced, the leaders of Richmond Triangle Players (RTP) and Firehouse Theatre started talking.
Originally scheduled to run in Richmond starting March 1, the show was a co-production between Virginia Repertory Theatre and Norfolk’s Virginia Stage Company. It played its scheduled performances at Virginia Stage in January and February but Virginia Rep scuttled the Richmond run, citing financial concerns.
Phil Crosby, the executive director at RTP, felt an immediate sense of loss. He and Nathaniel Shaw, Firehouse’s producing artistic director, saw a unique opportunity to work together to save the show, thanks in part to an unexpected opening in Firehouse’s schedule.
In a press release distributed today, Crosby and Shaw announced that “Fat Ham” will be staged for five performances at the Firehouse from April 16th to 19th.
“As a theatre focused on lifting up queer experiences, we felt the particular pain of losing this important Black and queer story,” says Crosby in the release. “We are excited we found a way to share it with our community.”
“Fat Ham” reimagines the classic Hamlet storyline, only explicitly centered on a gay Southern college student named Juicy. Playwright James Ijames won a Pulitzer Prize for his adaptation of Shakespeare’s drama into a comic tragedy, where particular attention is given to Juicy, as a self-aware young Black man, trying to break out of cycles of trauma and violence.
Shaw says he and Crosby have been working diligently “to see if there was a way to reclaim this experience, both for the artists who were excited to bring this story to Richmond, and for the audiences here who were clamoring to see it.”
The resulting production will be altered from the Virginia Stage run as the original set design would not fit on the smaller Firehouse stage. The number of changes that will need to be made, even if relatively small, have the theater companies calling this staging of “Fat Ham,” “a concert production.”
The full cast and creative team of the original production will be involved in the new staging. While Virginia Rep will not directly participate, many of their contributions to the original production will be maintained, including costumes and props.
“The leadership at Virginia Rep has been incredibly cooperative and generous in helping us make this new production happen,” Shaw and Crosby are quoted as stating, “including donating co-produced elements and giving permission to Concord Theatrical, which licenses the play, to use their advance payments to cover the licensing expense of this limited engagement.”
More details about “Fat Ham” and its run at Firehouse Theatre can be found at https://www.firehousetheatre.org/.
