Hamlet this is not.

New York-based director Taylor Reynolds was last spotted in D.C. bringing Fat Ham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning rewrite of the mammoth revenge tragedy Hamlet as a joyously Black, queer, and short backyard comedy, to Studio Theatre. Reynolds’ latest relocation of a William Shakespeare play to present-day America, the Harlem-set Merry Wives, doesn’t reimagine The Merry Wives of Windsor quite as radically as Fat Ham interrogated its ancient source, but the changes are still significant. The program claims playwright Jocelyn Bioh has kept 90 percent of the original text intact, but a lot of archaic jokes are out and mentions of jollof rice and other culturally specific signifiers are in.

This upbeat update distinguishes itself by celebrating Ghanian, Nigerian, and Senegales

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