“Hamlet”–a laugh riot, no? Well, yes, in the hands of playwright James Ijames (sounds like “rhymes”).

In “Fat Ham,” he moves the action to a Black family cookout somewhere in the South, makes his Hamlet a “thicc” gay man named Juicy, and opts for raucous comic joy over everybody-dies-at-the-end tragedy. But that’s not to say that Ijames ignores the profound philosophical questions raised by Shakespeare; rather, he challenges the ostensibly inevitable outcomes of inherited trauma and toxic masculinity.

The original production premiered exclusively digital at Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater in 2021 (because Covid), but that was enough to make it the first play to win a Pulitzer before being performed in front of a live audience. The show went on to the Public Theater in New York City, selling out immediately, and then moved to Broadway in 2023, where it received five Tony nominations.

Deimoni Brewington plays Juicy in American Stage’s “Fat Ham,” opening May 28 and running through June 22, 2025 in St. Petersburg, Florida. Credit: Courtesy of American Stage

And now Tampa Bay gets to see “Fat Ham” at American Stage, opening May 28 and running through June 22. Raymond O. Caldwell directs, and Deimoni Brewington plays Juicy.

Creative Loafing Tampa Bay talked to Brewington at the start of his second week of rehearsals, and he shared this fun fact: Caldwell was his freshman-year acting teacher at Howard University, from which he graduated in 2021.

CL: Why do you think Juicy is the name Ijames chose for the Hamlet character?
Brewington: First, it’s a term of endearment. In Black communities, we give names and nicknames to people that reflect their personality or reflect how we perceive them. He has written this character who is plus size, who is thicc with two c’s… who has a sensuality and a queerness. And then Hamlet is very juicy, you know. He got a lot going on!

Do you feel parallels between yourself and Juicy?
At first I was like, omigosh, I wanna make sure I know where Deimoni ends and Juicy begins. My artistic self immediately empathized with him, but it’s also been fun because there’s parts of his personality that are different from me… Because he be poppin’ off in this play!

I know you’ve done Shakespeare yourself. Have you been returning to ‘Hamlet’ to get insights into Juicy?
I had done the “To be or not to be” monologue in college. And before even getting this gig, I was already back into reading my Signet classic “Hamlet,” reading the articles about his cowardice, his bravery, his lack of movement. It was just perfect alignment, because I had already done a lot of immersion into his world.

I like that ‘Fat Ham’ plays with and subverts stereotypes of gayness and Blackness.
Queerness immediately invites nuance into the Black experience because it’s asking you to reintroduce the idea of fluidity in sex and expression and softness and sensuality. It is the release of breath, of allowing that reality to exist, but what the play captures in a very lovely way is that there is an active force against that—one that we are all complicit in.

I also like that Ijames has his characters talk to the audience from time to time, in the tradition of Shakespearean monologues.
There’s so many moments when “Hamlet” is going out pleading, thinking, pondering, asking people to hold space for him, and Juicy is doing this in a very direct way. And the audience is like, “Omigosh you’re actually talking to me, I’m a human being in America in 2025 and you’re an actor talking to me!” Then after we laugh about that, we’re having conversation—Juicy actually does need things from the audience. Oftentimes poor people, dreamers, artists have to find a third space or an audience where they can be their true self and be seen for who they really are or who they want to be.
Did you have someone that you could talk to? Who could see you for who you really were?
Let me tell you, I’m a believer, OK? I’m a firm believer in Jesus Christ. So this brings me to the time where I felt I could not talk about or be who I am. When you are walking a tightrope, when you are being told you have to be one thing or be another thing and you’re several things, you have to find some sort of outlet. For me, it was Jesus and the theater. As I recognize these two subsets—the weird nuances, the ups and downs, the strange and true about theater and the strange and true about the church—it has now allowed me to understand what’s strange and true about myself.

How have you and the cast in this short time—just a week now—established a sense of family?
Raymond facilitated a lot of getting-to-know-you kind of situations that allowed us to immediately establish community. I think sometimes we forget that theater-making is a huge group activity that requires a lot of listening and patience.

And the play’s big group moments—karaoke, charades, etc. They’re kind of wonderful but kind of daunting, I would think, especially with Ijames’s open-ended stage directions, like ‘Maybe he controls the others with the singing, maybe they’re all genuinely moved for a second, maybe it’s just awkward.’ How do you and the company decide where to land in those big moments?
It depends on what you’re giving. One of my favorite things about being an actor is, I do my homework and then I come in and you’re giving me something, and that improvisation allows us to figure out what’s gonna work, what’s not gonna work. In those places in the script where it’s like “whatever you wanna do,” we’ve been able to find moment by moment what works best.

By the way, I love your TikTok rendition of “That’s Me, Espresso.”
Oh my gosh, my TikTok!

I now will listen to that song in an entirely new way.

@dlion1212 Last weekend i very inappropriately decided to sing this entire bop, with the whimsy jazz choice, acapella, in the full uber on the way to the function. Twas well recieved so here yall go lmao #fyp #espressocover #thespiritofellamademedoit #bopalert #singing #isthatsweet #sabrinacarpenter ♬ original sound – Deimoni Brewington