Fun Home – Young Vic

Jenna Russell, Charlie McLellan, Ramsay Robertson, Brooke Haynes and Zubin Varla in Fun Home at the Young Vic, London. Picture: Marc Brenner

Fun Home continues at the Young Vic, London until 1 September 2018.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Arriving through the pearly gates of Broadway in 2015, and going on to win five Tony Awards, plus a Grammy for its original cast recording, the UK finally gets to share in the Fun Home fever at the Young Vic.

Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron conjure a world based on the autobiographical graphic novel (try saying that fast) of the same name by Alison Bechdel.

Set across three determinative ages in Alison’s own life, the musical functions as a series of vignettes centred around her family home, and particularly around her father, Bruce. Each balances its own alchemy of wit, empathy and tragic foreboding and are cleverly placed around an implied narrative rather than rigidly clinging to a linear one.

In the present, Alison looks on, wrestles with the truth of her memories, and grapples with the unexpected abyss which forms when she attempts to understand and redress the parental conflicts left unresolved.

To its credit, the book never preaches a thesis, but at its heart, it’s a musical about the myriad ways we try to reach out to our parents at every stage in life, however fallible we may have discovered them to be.

Tesori’s music is a perfect partner to this story. It’s hesitant and delicate at times, lingering in the back of the mind as doubt, or hope, creeps in. Other times it swells and crashes through everything as anger or joy inevitably envelops those of every generation. It’s a muscular and passionate score, with an angularity to it which echoes the eternal disconnect of the family itself.

Kron’s book, too, pays a great homage to the uncertainty and raw-ness of the source material.

Sam Gold’s intimate direction draws wonders from the ensemble. Eleanor Kane is notably charming in her role as ‘middle’ Alison – veering masterfully between awkward hilarity and the crushing responsibility and claustrophobia of her parental relationships. Her moment with ‘Changing My Major’ is a blast of joy that could not be easily forgotten.

Harriet Turnbull, likewise, plays a fantastic ‘young Alison’, with a natural honesty, and an empathy beyond her years – ‘Ring of Keys’ is a standout favourite.

Zubin Varla as Bruce is a powerful force. Juggling authority, crushing self-doubt, barely concealed mania and a creative and precise mind within a really humane portrayal of a man who could easily be branded monstrous is no easy task, but Varla is also charismatic, warm and wry. It’s a joy and a heartbreak to watch.

A word too, for David Zinn’s elegant set – perfectly detailed, and with a cinematic eye for the magnitude of a claustrophobic world, it truly honours Bechdel’s original artwork

There are some flaws of course – some characters who might have provided more breadth disappear without mention (possibly to spare the narrative too many branches) and there are a couple of sequences which feel a little stuck-on (the funeral home dance party, as fun as it is, lacks just enough to fully contextualise it).

However, such imperfections are of the desirable kind. There are so many avenues to explore, you can only venture so far along each before you have to return.

It’s surely an intense and invasive experience, to document your own formative memoirs into a graphic narrative, but to allow others to transform it into another medium is quite something else. In the case of Bechdel’s Fun Home, we are so very glad that she did.

Aura Simon