Sydney Lucas and Michael Cerveris in Fun Home at The Public Theater, New York. Picture: Joan Marcus
Fun Home continues at The Public Theater, New York, until November 17.
Alison Bechdel’s best-selling 2006 graphic novel Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic has been transformed into an unsentimental but deeply moving depiction of the complex connections – and disconnects – between parent and child. It‘s a luminous Off-Broadway offering, beautifully performed and told in compelling musical theatre terms.
Carrying the more succinct title of Fun Home, the show has book and lyrics by Lisa Kron, an actress and writer, whose plays reflect with wit and poignancy her own life experiences. Like Bechdel, Kron’s sexuality as a lesbian is a key component of her persona, and her understanding of and empathy for Bechdel’s story is evident in her adaptation. Kron’s lyrics, turning everyday talk into distinctive poetry, are given further richness and emotionality in the perfectly matched music of Jeanine Tesori. Tesori’s scores have been heard in such varied shows as Caroline or Change, Shrek the Musical and Thoroughly Modern Millie. Her music here strikes me as some of her best, going from frothy strains to full-blown melodies that approach operatic power.
The story tells of Alison’s growing up in a small town in Pennsylvania. The passions and personality of her father, Bruce, totally define family life, which also includes Alison’s mother and her two brothers. Bruce is both a high school English teacher and funeral parlour director, having taken over the business left by his late father. He is also a dedicated restorer of old houses and antique furniture, and the Bechdel house is a showpiece. (Fun Home is the family’s shorthand for funeral home, but it could also refer to their museum-like homestead.) Bruce is also gay; his life away from the family is cluttered with affairs with men and boys, and unspoken tensions swirl under the blanket of jovial serenity and paternal affection and discipline that Bruce throws over the household.
It’s only when Alison in college comes fully and happily to terms with her own sexuality and seeks understanding from her parents that she discovers from her mother the truth about Bruce. Home for a short visit, armed with her own self-knowledge, she hopes to make an honest connection with her father. It’s an attempt to come to terms with the uncertainties of her childhood, but Bruce remains glib and evasive. Shortly afterwards, the conflicts within him boil over and he commits suicide. Alison is left to find resolution within herself and her art of storytelling. (This is not a spoiler. The play shifts back and forth in time with Alison, in her forties, witnessing the past scenes of her life and sometimes guiding us through them. We’re told early on that Bruce killed himself, and that knowledge hangs over the proceedings.)
This synopsis hardly does justice to what happens on the stage. Under director Sam Gold’s inventive staging and sensitive guidance of his actors, Fun Home is much more enthralling than morbid. And there are episodes of great humour, as when the young Alison and her brothers put together a lively musical commercial for the Bechdel Funeral Home. Or when college-age Alison, after her first sexual encounter with another student, sings jubilantly: “I’m changing my major to Joan.” There are also touching moments, as when young Alison and Bruce go through the contents of a give-away box Bruce has salvaged from a barn due for demolition.
The cast is impeccable. Michael Cerveris melds every twist in Bruce’s contradictions and charisma into a full-blown characterisation that has you disliking the man one moment, enjoying him the next, and in the end feeling for his plight. Judy Kuhn as his wife stands quietly by, until finally late in the play she unburdens herself to Alison, describing how her life has been shattered. She does so in an aria-like song that is heartbreaking.
Alison is played by three actors. Beth Malone vibrates with innate intelligence as the eldest Alison, and Alexandra Socha is enormously winning as the college-age Alison. But the miniature miracle of the show is Sydney Lucas as “small Alison”. The tyke is amazing, combining beguiling talents for youthful song and dance with genuine emotional depth. There’s little or no sense of the show-off that frequently marks juvenile performance. Griffin Birney and Noah Hinsdale bring the same sort of natural acuity to the much smaller roles of Alison’s young brothers.
David Zinn’s scenic design and Ben Stanton’s lighting add immeasurably to the cinematic fluidity of the staging. You feel as if you’re on a eye-filling tour of the Bechdel’s showplace home, as vignettes of handsomely refurbished furnishings come into place on the revolving stage. But, of course, you are also making a tour of Alison’s mind as she searches through her past for a greater understanding of herself and her father. It’s a delicate and haunting journey.
Ron Cohen
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