Murderous Uncle Claudius’ complaint about his nephew Hamlet’s “unmanly grief” over his father’s assassination is not among the handful of lines from Hamlet that James Ijames has preserved in Fat Ham, his Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning update of the tragedy. But a perceived deficit of manliness remains the subtext of everything that Rev (Ijames’ Claudius stand-in) says to Juicy (the playwright’s analog for the glum Danish prince). But by foregrounding the relationship between vengeance and masculinity that drives the tale that was ancient even before William Shakespeare wrote its definitive version, Ijames hasn’t just queered, Blackened, and contemporized the tragedy. He’s also made it funny. Comedy is what tragedies eventually become, if Carol Burnett is to be believed.

Resetting the play from the gloomy Castle Elsinore to a backyard barbecue in the American South is such a rich comic idea you wonder why no one tried it before Ijames, the prolific dramatist whose more recent Good Bones, a study of race and gentrification, had its world premiere at Studio Theatre last summer. Studio has followed up that debut with its own Fat Ham, and a succulent feast it is.

Designer Jean Kim’s set evokes the backyard and porch of “a house in North Carolina, or Virginia, or Maryland, or Tennessee” (as the program indicates) vividly enough that you can almost feel the lurid humidity and smell the ribs on the grill. The barbecue is a nuptial celebration for Tedra (Tanesha Gary), Juicy’s loving but aloof mom, and Rev, the scheming uncle who swooped right in after Juicy’s father, Pap, was killed in prison. (Greg Alverez Reid plays both the slain Pap and the usurping Rev.) Pap’s ghost tells Juicy that it was Pap’s brother Rev who arranged his murder and urges Juicy to avenge him. So Ijames has kept the good bones of Hamlet’s plot intact.

But he’s introduced the more contemporary idea that vengeance is no justification for murder. Juicy’s pal Tio (a gentle Thomas Walter Booker), reimagined as an affable, porn-loving stoner, points out that Juicy is the unlucky recipient of inherited trauma, having seen multiple generations of his ancestors lost to violence and/or prison. Juicy—a commanding Marquis D. Gibson, who has understudied the role in prior productions, including the Broadway one that closed in July—has figured out he’s gay, but hasn’t yet had much opportunity to explore that discovery with a partner. So between his departed father’s observation that his uncle is “literally fucking your mother,” that same uncle’s taunts about Juicy’s soft and sensitive demeanor, and the news that Tedra and Rev blew his tuition money to remodel their bathroom, the kid is having a tough day. Juicy is earning an online degree in human resources, one of Ijames’ subtler jokes.

Gary makes Tedra a sympathetic figure despite how quick she is to dismiss Juicy’s objections to her hasty marriage to her former brother-in-law. “They did it in the Bible all the time!” she reasons, and she seems just freaky enough that that might be how Rev talked her into bed in the first place. 

Elsewhere, Ijames has recalculated the sexual dynamics of his source material. Opal (Gaelyn D. Smith), his Ophelia replacement, is just as queer as Juicy. And Opal’s brother Larry—a Marine who shows up for the party in his dress blues—nurses a crush on Juicy. Matthew Elijah Webb’s depiction of Larry as a man who has tried to bury his sexuality beneath military discipline is where Ijames and director Taylor Reynolds finally slow their litany of sitcom-paced jokes to let a hint of the old, sad Hamlet’s tragic power shine through. Larry’s declaration of love for Juicy is what prompts the “What a piece of work is man!” soliloquy in Ijames’ telling. The fact that what was Act 2, Scene 2 from Hamlet comes so much later in Ijames’ version offers a clue as to how efficiently he’s streamlined things, whittling Shakepeare’s beefiest play—north of four hours if the full First Folio text is performed—to a brisk 95 minutes. Once you make the decision to replace mutually deadly duels with Drag Race-style costume reveals and dance parties, all things become possible.

Fat Ham, by James Ijames and directed by Taylor Reynolds, runs through Dec. 23 at Studio Theatre. studiotheatre.org. $35–$100.