So what is the feeling of the as-yet-unmade choice - fear, exhilaration, or delay? For Ijames it’s the melting lassitude of a summer backyard get-together, somewhere in which the heat is serious.
To like Fat Ham or not to like Fat Ham? Days later, that is still my question. After seeing the Pulitzer Prize–winning Fat Ham, I have been lost in my own version of that long indecision, teetering between disappointment and pleasure. They each deal with a man as he examines and extends a moment of doubt - the hero needs to take action, but he doesn’t know what that action should be. But equivocation does make up the texture of both plays. At least … I mean … that’s sort of true? Appropriately enough, I’m not confident that I’m right about either of those premises: Ijames’s comedy at the Public Theater is more about alleviating generational anguish than it is about Shakespeare, for instance. James Ijames’s Fat Ham is a play about Hamlet, and Hamlet is a play about ambivalence therefore Fat Ham is a play about ambivalence.
