As I point out in my guide to theater awards, the Pulitzers have a spotty record for recognizing work that endures. Some may wonder: Is “Fat Ham” on a par with Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” or Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie,” or Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible?” Actually, none of those plays, now understood to be masterpieces of the American theater, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Taking place during a Black family’s backyard barbecue in the American South, James Ijames’s play is a sometimes raunchy, sometimes pointed, largely freewheeling comedy, whose characters Karaoke to pop dance hits watch porn and get high come out of the closet. ‘Fat Ham,” this year’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, which opened tonight at the Public Theater, is inspired by “Hamlet,” but it parts ways with the Bard, and not just because of all the partying.
