Kurt Vonnegut was famous for his conviction that all stories conform to very defined narrative shapes. He liked to chart out each storyline’s trajectory—he had about eight of them–and gave them names like “Man in Hole” and “Boy Meets Girl.”
And now AI has demonstrated that these fundamental story forms are indeed legit–identifiable, indelible, ubiquitous. It also appears that storytelling runs deep in us, even more essential than the impact of where we have lived or when, or what our cultural traditions may have been.
The universal appeal of William Shakespeare over the last 400 years may be related to this taxonomy. But while it may be possible to chart and name the storyline template for each play, that does not fully explain why Shakespeare—more than any other writer—is so relentlessly adapted, altered, reconfigured, reconsidered. Even with all that wear and tear over the centuries, Shakespeare’s plays can still keep offering new ways to express and explore contemporary concerns. As long as we humans are on this planet, I’m pretty certain he’ll be with us.
Two productions on view in Boston this week have links with the Bard.
Fat Ham is not an adaptation per se but might be more appropriately described as “Shakespeare-infused.” Written by James Ijames (and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2022,) Fat Ham is at the Huntington Theater’s Calderwood theater through October 29.
The play is set in a backyard barbecue somewhere in the south. Juicy the protagonist—Ijames calls him “a kinda Hamlet”—is young, black, queer, out of step with his family, taking online courses towards a degree in human resources (what a great trope—studying humans without having any contact with them!) Juicy’s father, in prison when he was murdered, has now appeared as a ghost asking for revenge on Juicy’s uncle—now married to Juicy’s mother—who made the arrangements for his father to be shivved.
A familiar storyline. And yet not.
From Maya Philips’ review of Fat Ham on Broadway earlier this year:
“So many playwrights and directors try to find the spaces in Shakespeare’s texts that they can squeeze into, strong-arming their personal sensibilities and contemporary politics into some of Shakespeare’s best-known speeches and scenes. Ijames does the opposite in ‘Fat Ham’; he steals the bones of the original and sloughs off the excess like the fatty bits on a slab of meat. He crafts his own story and then within it makes space for Shakespeare again.”
Most of the characters in Fat Ham have their parallels in Hamlet. But the linkages are loose, as is the throughline in the two plays. Ijames pivots from Shakespeare’s tale of revenge to a story about toxic masculinity, homophobia and gender roles. There are tragic elements in Fat Ham, but the play is full of soulful humor, joy and redemptive catharsis. “The play cracks open into a celebration of the feminine,” Ijames said. Unlike the catastrophic final scene of Hamlet, Fat Ham ends in celebration. While it may have been inspired by a classical tragedy, it doesn’t have to end like one.
The cast is a terrific ensemble of body types and personas. All of the performers are all at their best when they are in motion, dancing and gesticulating. The somber solipsism of Hamlet isn’t a fit with the kinetic energy of these characters. And even though there are a few early blips in the pacing of the play, director Steve Walker-Webb brings it all home for an unforgettable finale.
Meanwhile Taming of the Shrew–arguably the most problematic of Shakespeare’s plays for modern audiences–is being produced by the Actor’s Shakespeare Project at the Modern Theater. Unlike Fat Ham, this production is an adaptation (albeit a wild one) of the Shakespeare play.
Director Christopher V. Edwards is well aware of the treacherous waters he must navigate in order to stage Shrew for today’s audiences:
“In 2023 it is a challenge to explore a play that deals with the subjugation of a female character reviled by men as a “shrew” because she is aggressive, vocal, and sometimes violent. So the bigger question is, why do this play now? For me, it is simple. The reality of the world outside these theater doors breathes necessity and urgency into this script. Our culture’s toxic masculinity harms every single one of us—not just women and non-binary folks, but men as well. As some fight for a brighter and more inclusive future, many others still cling to an idea of an imagined past to which we should be striving to return. And as many—mostly cis white men—fight to cling to this ‘glorious past,’ perspectives from disenfranchised populations tend to be forgotten or outright rejected.”
The Taming of the Shrew is actually a play within a play, even though most productions choose not to frame it that way. In the 1631 quarto version of this play, action begins with an intoxicated and badly behaved Christopher Sly being thrown out of a bar. A wealthy lord encounters him and then enlists his men to trick Sly into thinking he is an aristocrat. It is the lord’s men who actually perform this play within a play. When viewed in this frame, it is actually a story about two kinds of taming—the taming of Kate as well as the taming of Sly.
Edward’s version is set in the 1970s. His Sly is an unapologetically misogynistic man. He is drugged by a group of women (who have had enough of his shenanigans) and then he is led to believe he is a woman named Kate. This is all conceived as a way to teach a bad man a lesson.
The rest of the casting is all female. Women playing men do so as exaggerated caricatures of toxic males, outfitted in painfully unattractive polyester plaid clothing. Ouch.
The ensemble of performers is high energy, zany and very engaging. Does this gender swapped production succeed in dispelling our discomfort with this play? Yes and no. But like all good directors, Edwards offers us another way to consider this work.
It is tricky business. Julie Taymor, a film and stage director who has also done this play, had this to say about Shakespeare’s Shrew:
“He actually wrote a play about the unmarriageable, or the undesirable. It’s not about the beautiful princess or the lovely daughter. I think that’s astounding.
It’s the way it is, so it’s good that we show it, and talk about it. A loudmouth woman with a strong opinion is still considered a shrew in our society…this a play about a woman who has said, ‘I am not going to go with the flow.’”
Both Fat Ham and Taming of the Shrew have been staged to confront social issues that are third rail radioactive in our contemporary landscape. With these issues being so loaded at this moment in time, both productions made the decision to break the fourth wall and engage with the audience directly. When done with care (and not as a form of manipulation or pandering,) this can open up a powerful connection between the play and the audience.
Throughout Fat Ham, characters periodically turn to the audience for sympathy and support. (On the night I was there, the audience was thrilled to be the whoop whoop cheer track for all their favorite causes.) In Shrew, Edwards employed an ingeniously simple device to delineate between the public play and the performer’s private point of view: small red clown noses. When the nose is on an actor’s face, they are in the play. When it is taken off, the commentary is personal (and often closely aligned with what the audience is also thinking.) These nose-off asides serve as meta text, a kind of chyron that reiterates just how absurd this long standing, deep-seated misogyny actually is. The story is being told in tandem tracks.
This playful disregard for the fourth wall—which both of these productions do with great success—introduces a different kind of theatrical experience. The audiences at both performances I attended were jacked and ready to applaud–for a young man who finally claims his true identity, or to jeer at a clueless man about his unconscionable behavior. Rather than being constrained by the traditional division between stage and audience, these theatergoers have become complicit, stepping in to serve as a chorus of support.
This “we see all of you there in the audience” style of theater making is most effective when the play being performed is a familiar one. And who better than Shakespeare to provide the common ground—those good bones–for some wildly inventive and highly relevant theatrical romps.