< Large Ham

Large Ham/Theater

Here the hamming tradition begun. People in the cheap seats, take the fat off your faces.

Actors

  • Sarah Bernhardt was the original modern theatre Large Ham, even taking on Large Ham male roles. She was also a Real Life Determinator - nothing could stop her, even being one-legged with almost no mobility could stop her from being an acclaimed actress.
  • Isadore Duncan
  • Zero Mostel

Musical Ham

  • Jesus Christ Superstar can have several parts with lots of ham. Caiphas in "This Jesus Must Die," for one, and Pilate in "Pilate and Christ" and "Trial Before Pilate." Judas is pretty hammy too.
  • A Very Potter Musical contains copious amounts of ham. "Did somebody say Ron? / Draco?", Cho Chang gets a special intro dance, the first scene Voldemort gets with a body, he gets a (literal) song and dance about it, Bellatrix spends her tenure running about, shouting, and getting wet over her dark lord, Umbridge needs to be seen to be believed, and Dumbledore's entrance is ridiculously long note on 'Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelcoooooooooome'.
    • Snape's the reason they have such limited scenery, though. Man walks on stage and everyone suddenly feels like they've nommed their way through a Costco-sized pack of bacon.
  • Practically a requirement for anyone playing Richard Henry Lee in 1776, as the script has him constantly making "Lee"/"-ly" puns on adverbs and proclaiming he will single-handed-Lee deliver Virginia to the independence movement or may he be cursed forever. Lee's involvement in the play amounts to basically two scenes and the original Broadway actor still won a Tony because his musical number performance was just that memorable.
  • George Hearn, whose performance as Albin in La Cage aux Folles was parodied by Forbidden Broadway:

"I ham what I ham
And when I ham, I get ovations..."

  • Maureen in Rent. Off stage character until "Over The Moon", she takes over the show during that number and much of Act 2
  • Applegate in the baseball-themed adaptation Damn Yankeesis ham-a-licious.
  • The Two Men in Kiss Me Kate. "Brush Up Your Shakespeare", indeed.
  • The Engineer in Miss Saigon. The show's dark comic relief, this guy steals the show from right under the 'main characters feet if played right
  • Large Ham: Now comes in CD form! Pick up a copy of the 2005 Little Women musical and skip ahead to "The Weekly Volcano Press." Words cannot describe the awesomeness of the entire cast (all... seven of them) hamming the life out of a pulpy, What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic fairy tale, clearly having far, far too much fun.
  • Snoopy in You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown.
  • The French Ambassador in Of Thee I Sing. "My country, she is deeply hurt. Not since the days of Louis the Seventh, the Eighth, the Ninth, the Tenth, and possibly the Eleventh has such a thing happened!"
  • This is practically a requirement for the Leonard Bernstein operetta version of Voltaire's Candide. Of special note for the level of salt-cured goodness, however, is Kristin Chenoweth's 2004 turn as Cunegonde, in which she was clearly having a grand old time. See an example.
  • Big River,the musical of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Duke and King...when done best.
  • Basically every single last character in Little Shop of Horrors if the production's any good. It's quicker to list lines that aren't pure ham than that are, provided you can think of any.
  • No matter how good the actors are in all the rest of the show, just try to find a production of Les Misérables where every confrontation between Valjean and Javert doesn't immediately become a giant scenery-chewing contest. Just try.
  • Wicked has Madame Morrible, the headmistress of Shiz University. Her performamce at the end of Act 1 is utterly scene-shredding when done by the proper actress:

"Her green skin is but the outward manifestorium of her twisted nature! This...distortion! This...repulsion! This...WICKEEEEEEEEED! WIIIIIIIIIIIIITCH!"

Shakespearean Ham

Stephen Sondham

  • Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: A musical with melodramatic tendencies and a tip of the blood-spattered hat to the Grand Guignol shows. Mrs. Lovett's infamous meat pies often come with a side of ham. Just how much and for which characters depends on the production, but it's pretty much a given for Pirelli.
    • The song A Little Priest", the Act I finale which is chock-full of ham, Lampshades its own hamminess. The movie tried to do it without being hammy and thus demonstrates that ham is sometimes necessary.
  • Miles Gloriosus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Actually, most of the main characters in this require some degree of ham.
    • Don't forget, Miles takes LARGE STEPS!
  • Into the Woods has both the Princes as Large Hams. AGONY! FAR MORE PAINFUL THAN YOURS!
    • Oh, the Witch tops them all. "IT'S THE LAAAAAAAAAAAASST MIDNIGHT! SO GOODBYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEE AAAAAAAAALLLL!!!!!!!" Seriously, count the number of single-syllable lines of hers that get drawn out.

Hamdrew Lloyd Weber

  • Another female example: Carlotta in The Phantom of the Opera (and by extension, many of the actresses playing her).
  • Lloyd Webber loves his large hams. Pharaoh from Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, The Rum Tum Tugger from CATS, and Herod from "Jesus Christ Superstar" (especially the 2000 version) are some of theater's best hams.
  • In the London West End version of Cats, Old Deutromony and Bustopher Jones are played by Brian Blessed.
  • Count Fosco of The Woman in White, another Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. It's another Melodrama so everybody hams it up, but as the show's primary comic relief and a villain, he's a lot more fun than the other characters.
  • Michael Crawford, who originated the role in London, has become one of musical theater's great hams period - from Barnum to The Phantom of the Opera (he originated that role too!) to his concert performances, he puts his whole heart into everything he does.

Non-Musical Ham

  • The title character in Doctor Faustus sold his soul to the devil to become MORE of a ham (and he's plenty in the scenes before he does).
  • Madame Rosepettle in Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You In The Closet And I'm Feelin' So Sad. (Played by Hermione Gingold in one production.)
  • John Barrymore's ghost in I Hate Hamlet and arguably the character of Dierdre as well.
  • The Man Who Came to Dinner is another play populated almost entirely by hams, with Sheridan Whiteside as the king.
  • Noises Off features ham within ham. The characters are the cast and crew of an over-the-top Farce and perform accordingly, but offstage they're only slightly more subdued.
  • Walter in Don't Drink the Water. Marion meanwhile is a unique character in she can be played as either a large ham or a Deadpan Snarker.
  • Most of the cast of cjaracters in Fools, with special mention to Count Yousekevitch.
  • Tito Merelli in Lend Me a Tenor is all about the operatic ham.

Other performance forms

  • For Murder on Center Stage...there's Stanley the Janitor. In his Shakespearean acting.
  • The entire cast of any Gilbert and Sullivan operetta needs to be Large Hams. Even the chorus members.
    • The works of Gilbert and Sullivan can basically be described as overacting set to music. This is about 97% of their charm.
    • Even allowing for this, the Pirate King and the Mikado are in a category all their own.
      • Though the Mikado faces, at the very least, stiff competition from Katisha.
        • Penzance (Pirates of) is probably the single hammiest, and my personal favourite (hammy in the best way). We have the Pirates ( 'for I am... a PIRATE KING!' [my capitals] is pure overacting in the best sense, so is 'With Cat-like Tread', which is a parody on the similarly ludicrous but played dead straight 'chorus' of abductors in Rigoletto act 2), the Major-General (The Very Model of A Modern Major-General, but also his breeze song, and the orphan/often joke, as well as the 'tombs of his ancestors' scene at the start of Act II, his daughters (Mabel, with her deliberately over the top colaratura, being the best known, but his other daughters do their share. The policemen (tarantara tarantara tarantara...) go without saying. A note - none of these parts are badly sung, or ought to be. They should, indeed be very well sung, but the lyrics (e.g. 'Pray Observe the Magnaminity' for the apogee (not a patter song as most of the tongue-twisters are) of the tongue-twisting) and style make it comedic. Simple rubbishy singing will ruin it.
  • Cirque Du Soleil shows also demand everyone to be ready and willing to ham it up if and when need be, and often without intelligible dialogue (if that!) to boot. In particular, the vast majority of comic characters/clowns are large hams.
  • Anyone in a Pantomime is required to be one of these, the bigger the better.
  • Any "buffo" role in opera ever.
    • ONLY the buffo? Dude, if you're NOT hammy, you have no place in opera. Period.
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