Fat Ham, RSC, Stratford review - it's Hamlet Jim, but not as we know it

$8.2B. That’s what can happen when you re-imagine Hamlet.

I doubt that writer, James Ijames, had The Lion King’s box office in mind when he set out to create a Deep South, black and contemporary version of Shakespeare’s drama of familial dysfunction, but he’s got a Pulitzer on the mantelpiece at home and now a run at the RSC. I suspect he’d have settled for that.

We open on a barbecue to celebrate the marriage of Juicy’s mother, Tedra, to her husband’s brother, Rev, after the murder, in prison, of Juicy’s father, Pap. Juicy’s friend, Tio, is larking about, but sees the ghost of Pap and, soon, so does Juicy. Vengeance is demanded, with Rev the target. Things don’t get any easier for the kid when childhood friend Larry arrives in his full fig dress uniform and the sexual tension crackles. Larry’s sister, Opal, is much further out of the closet, but her bombastic mother, Rabby, can’t see any of this.

As you will surmise from that roll call, the play is full of “Oh yeah…” moments, when characters and scenes from the inspiration jab you in the ribs. There’s one or two excellent callback jokes too in a production that teems with laughter and bonhomie for all its underlying current of murder and betrayal. A Happy Hamlet? Well, not quite, but all human life is on that lawn under the Southern sky and Ijames is clear that there’s plenty of joy to be had for all the existential angst paralysing the queer boys.Olisa Odele (pictured above) is splendid as Juicy. His gait alone gives away his triple-outsider status – a soft (ie gay) man in a hard (ie straight) man’s culture, an aspirant academic in a family that values doing above thinking and, lurking under the surface, the trauma of simply existing as a black man in a white man’s world. Racism is not at the heart of this play – it’s more interested in sexuality and inter-generational clashes – but an early speech about how the burden of slavery still drives the 21st century Black American experience, lodges it in our mind, a context for all that follows.

In his FUBU shirt, Odele is always on the edge of the raucous joshing and verbals, but he gets his moment in a showstopping turn that needs no revealing here, but isn’t the first time this season that the RSC has showcased the work of its favourite band. So Odele can sing as well as time a biting jibe when required, in a very strong performance.

Though he has a pop at pretty much everyone, Juicy’s main target is Rev, his father’s usurper, who is given a rangy menace by Sule Rimi, all passive aggression when not being actually aggressive. At first, it’s hard to see why Tedra (a sexy and strutting Andi Osho) is attracted to him, but she wants to be “seen” after years of scorn from Pap (every bit as much of a bastard as his brother in this telling) and you can feel her longed for validation in her new husband’s attentive arms.

Jasmine Elcock’s Opal has worked out her identity long before her conflicted brother Larry (Corey Montague-Sholay) and hesitant Juicy, a young woman with a lot more to do than merely sing laments and dispense herbs. Sandra Marvin (Rabby) and Kieran Taylor-Ford (Tio) are given the most licence to go over the top with the comic cuts, and they do, staying just the right side (probably) of stereotyping the Southern matriarch and stoner kid.

Though director, Sideeq Heard, delivers a tremendous finale true to the writer’s desire to flip the feelings usually engendered in a Hamlet audience trooping out into the night, the lip sync drag show still felt a little tacked on, a little passé in its conception and execution. Sure, they all (almost all) live happily ever after, but they seem like suddenly different people.

But maybe that’s the point. Free your mind and the rest really does follow.

• Fat Ham at RSC, Stratford until 13 September
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