The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-28)

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SATURDAY, MAY 28 , 2022. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/STYLE EZ RE C

BY PETER MARKS

new york — Here’s to the play-

wrights who quip. And yes, please,

everybody laugh, because things are

terrible right now, and we can all use

the kind of release activated by being

with other people and sharing an

hour or two of funny respite.

Chief among the blessed humorists

at the moment: James Ijames, whose

divine comedy “Fat Ham” just won the

Pulitzer Prize for drama. (A thanks to

the Pulitzers for recognizing a play

with a thoroughly joyful leitmotif.)

The work made its debut last year as a

digital production by Philadelphia’s

Wilma Theater, where Ijames is one of

three co-artistic directors.

And now, at the Public Theater, in a

production with the National Black

Theatre, the show gets its live theatri-

cal premiere, courtesy of director

Saheem Ali and a terrific corps of

seven actors who plant their feet

firmly in Ijames’s cheeky turf. (His

surname is pronounced IMES.) “Fat

Ham” is not the most delicately

wrought work of dramatic literature

SEE NOTEBOOK ON C2

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK

‘Fat Ham’

comes with

extra mustard

o n the wry

BY DAN ZAK AND MONICA HESSE

A

merica: twisting in rage and grief, stricken by hopelessness and doom. ¶ America: sending its

children to school, wondering if they’ll get shot, knowing that nothing will change if they do. ¶

America with a gun to its own head. ¶ “I’m done,” said Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was

killed in the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., on MSNBC Tuesday, hours after a teenage

gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Te x. “They f----ing failed our kids again. Okay? I’m

done. I’ve had it. How many more times?” ¶ Probably many more. Collective shock and grief have long been

replaced by a zombie mind-set of depraved acceptance. Nothing will change, barring a profound shake-up of

Congress, so best to adapt. Best to memorize what your children are wearing every morning, in case they are

shot beyond easy identification during science class. Best to practice the “quiet game,” and wonder if your

kindergartner realizes that, if ever it’s n ot a game, the prize for winning is surviving. ¶ “I am sick and tired of it,”

said President Biden, who noted that — in the nearly 10 years since the massacre of 20 first-graders and six

adults in Newtown, Conn. — “there have been over 900 incidents of gunfire reported on school grounds.” ¶

Consider how not shocked you are by any of this. The broader damage is how it feels expected, even inevitable.

It is the gradual, bloodless massacre of all of us. SEE SHOOTING ON C3

BY TRAVIS M. ANDREWS AND

EMILY YAHR

A Fairfax County Circuit Court jury

heard closing arguments in the con-

tentious trial between film stars and

former spouses Johnny Depp and Am-

ber Heard on Friday, but after a couple

hours of deliberation decided to re-

sume their work after the holiday

weekend.

Depp filed a defamation lawsuit

against his ex-wife over a 2018 op-ed

she wrote in The Washington Post, in

which she referred to herself as a pub-

lic figure r epresenting d omestic abuse.

Depp, seeking $50 million, claims the

article damaged his career and has

denied allegations of abuse. Heard

countersued Depp for $100 million

after Depp’s lawyer Adam Waldman

gave several statements in the media

describing her claims as false. (The

Post is not a defendant in either suit.)

For Depp’s claim, the jury is weigh-

ing seven questions, including wheth-

er Heard made or published three

separate statements in the op-ed, in-

cluding the headline; if they imply or

insinuate anything about Depp; and if

so, whether they were false and/or

made with actual malice. Under

Heard’s counterclaim, the jury has to

decide six questions, including wheth-

er Waldman, while acting as an agent

to Depp, made the statements, and if

they were false and/or made with actu-

al malice.

SEE TRIAL ON C8

Depp-Heard

defamation

case goes

to the jury

The case centers on whether

actor’s career was hurt by

op-ed about domestic abuse

SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST

ESSAY

One nation under Fire

In a land where guns outnumber people, thoughts and prayers once again supplant hopes and dreams

BY ANN HORNADAY

“Hi, baby. Surprise.”
Those were the first words most peo-
ple heard Ray Liotta speak, in Jonathan
Demme’s 1986 road trip comedy “Some-
thing Wild.” At least, it was a road trip
comedy until that moment.
During the preceding hour, Lulu,
played by Melanie Griffith, and Charlie
(Jeff Daniels) seemed to be embarking on
an eccentric picaresque about mis-
matched lovers taking a zany car ride
from Manhattan through Pennsylvania.
When Liotta’s character — Lulu’s ex-hus-
band, coincidentally named Ray —
showed up, the emotional weather
changed in an instant. Staring down Lulu
and Charlie with ice-blue eyes, his mus-
cles bulging alarmingly under a black
T-shirt, Ray injected real menace into a
quirky romance that turned murderously
ugly the moment he appeared on screen.
“Who is that guy?” viewers immedi-
ately wondered about Liotta, who died
this week at age 67 in the Dominican
Republic, where he was filming a movie.
(The cause is still being investigated.)
“Something Wild” wasn’t Liotta’s
screen debut — he already had one movie
credit, and had starred in the long-run-

APPRECIATION

Behind blue eyes: No one knew how to be a bad man l ike Liotta

ORION/KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK

Ray Liotta’s menacing charisma l ocked viewers’ eyes and made the hair stand up

on the backs of their necks in his breakout role in “Something Wild.” The actor,

who died Thursday, later cemented his place in movie history with “Goodfellas.”

ning soap opera “A nother World.” But as

the violent, abusive, ultimately psychotic

Ray Sinclair, he burst into public con-

sciousness in what still qualifies as one of

the most astonishing breakout perform-

ances in generational memory: Barbra

Streisand in “Funny Girl.” Eddie Murphy

in “48 Hrs.” Ray Liotta in “Something

Wild” deserves a place in that pantheon,

announcing the kind of raw talent and

native charisma that can’t be manufac-

tured or marketed.

Hollywood took notice.

Liotta starred in two affecting dramas

shortly after “Something Wild,” playing

against type as a medical student in

“Dominick & Eugene” (1988) and as

Shoeless Joe Jackson in “Field of

Dreams” (1989). But he couldn’t escape

his core power as a performer — the sense

of menace, by way of physical size, a

slightly scarred-looking face, a feline

smile and those Javelin-missile eyes, that

he exuded just by standing there. By all

accounts, Liotta was a lovely man in

person. On-screen, there was no one

scarier, and that simmering quality — the

quintessential “dangerous personality”

— accounts for why audiences couldn’t

take their eyes off him. No matter what

SEE APPRECIATION ON C3

Crosses and memorials fill the town square in Uvalde, Tex., after a gunman killed 19 children and two adults a t a local

elementary school on Tuesday, 10 days after a mass shooting in Buffalo.

TELEVISION

Hey, stranger! After three

years, “Stranger Things”

returns. Time to catch up. C4

CAROLYN HAX

Working on a project, one

spouse yells no matter what

the other one does. C8