There have been a lot of remakes and updates of William Shakespeare’s plays. “West Side Story” is “Romeo and Juliet” set in 1950’s New York. The recent hit rom-com Anyone But You is based on “Much Ado About Nothing.” The films 10 Things I Hate About You and Deliver Us from Eva and the stage musical “Kiss Me Kate” are “The Taming of the Shrew” in disguise.
“Fat Ham,” by playwright James Ijames, follows in the tradition of modernizing a Shakespeare play — in this case, “Hamlet.” The Pulitzer Prize-winning play opens May 17 at GableStage in Coral Gables, but don’t expect a stage full of dead characters as happens in The Bard’s tragedy about a Danish prince.
This story was originally produced by WLRN, South Florida’s only public radio station at 91.3 FM, as part of a content sharing partnership with MIA Media Group. Read more at WLRN.org
