Theater Assessment: “Fun Home” – The Fragility of Memory

By Hannah Brueske

Fun Home’s relevance not solely lies in the way it flawlessly interweaves three storylines that revolve across the identical character, however the way it dramatizes, with grace, humor, and pathos, a well-known human battle — taking a look at our mother and father by grownup eyes.

Fun Home Music by Jeanine Tesori, Book & Lyrics by Lisa Kron. Based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel. Directed by Logan Ellis. Staged by the Huntington Theatre Company on the Huntington Theatre (264 Huntington Ave), Boston, by December 14.

When Fun Home, a musical primarily based on the acclaimed graphic memoir by lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel, opened on Broadway in 2015, it made historical past as one of many first reveals to focus on a lesbian protagonist. It acquired twelve Tony nominations, successful 5 (together with Best Book, Score, and Musical). In this revival of the present on the Huntington Theatre Company, director Logan Ellis proves why the story — with its heartfelt guide and lyrics by Lisa Kron and emotionally charming rating by Jeanine Tesori — must proceed to be advised now. The materials’s relevance not solely lies in the way it flawlessly interweaves three storylines that revolve across the identical character. Fun Home additionally dramatizes, with grace, humor, and pathos, a well-known human battle — taking a look at our mother and father by grownup eyes.

The present opens with a middle-aged Alison, performed with constantly stern conviction by Sarah Bockel, at her drafting board, annoyed at her lack of ability to color (or somewhat draw) pictures that precisely chronicle her difficult relationship along with her father, Bruce. As she recollects key recollections, the story splits into three phases of Alison’s life. Maya Jacobson provides an endearing embodiment of adolescent discovery as she performs Alison when she makes her sexual awakening in school. Lyla Randall performs Alison as a nine-year-old in a fiercely assured efficiency whose emotional depth equals that of her two grownup counterparts.

In lots of Alison’s recollections of childhood, the Bechdel’s seem like an image good 1970’s household residing in a fantastically furnished residence. As Alison watches the previous play out from the viewpoint of the current, she begins to seek for the small print she missed. The home actuality, beneath the placid floor, is grim. After all, that is additionally the house wherein her father is a closeted homosexual man who struggles with extreme OCD, has reckless affairs with youthful males, and finally, simply as Alison blossoms into her personal sexuality in school, commits suicide.

Playing Bruce, the ghost that haunts the current, actor Nick Duckart has the problem of fleshing out a person who is barely seen by his daughter’s more and more essential eyes. Duckart injects the dishonest husband — and infrequently a self-absorbed father — with a sympathetic insecurity that’s at its best at moments of pressure, such because the shake in his voice when arguing together with his spouse, or the intimations of projection when he tries to make younger Alison gown extra female.

Director Logan Ellis is satisfied that the theater can function a particular platform the place the residing and the useless can converse. And that works particularly effectively on the HTC he stated in an interview with New England Theater Mirror. “When I sit in that theater, I feel a ghostly presence,” Ellis stated. “And I feel such a history in the air between the audience and that fantastic big stage.”

Ellis makes good use of the big proscenium theater house. Alison is usually positioned on the periphery of the stage, reevaluating her recollections as they play out earlier than her on the middle. This invitations the viewers to sympathize with Alison’s perspective, decoding, alongside along with her, what’s going on. It additionally makes for affecting theater; because the middle-aged Alison items collectively the small print of her reminiscence, the characters of her previous actually push the furnishings and set items into place.

Scenic designer Tanya Orlando has formed the emotional environment of the ‘memory’ areas throughout time with distinctive element. Emphasizing Alison’s preliminary author’s block and isolation, the set is apparent and dreary — a darkish room, save for the drawing desk below the highlight. The house that Alison as a baby inhibits stands in stark distinction. The Bechdel residence, arguably the present’s most basic location, showcases Bruce’s neurotic obsession with bourgeois conference: it’s ornately put collectively, brilliant and filled with priceless antiques.

The set design additionally aids the piercing impact of the final reminiscence Alison recollects — the ultimate second between her and her father, simply weeks earlier than he would step in entrance of a shifting truck. It passed off solely just a little after Alison got here out to him and her mom Helen in school. Alison solely grapples along with her father’s queerness after Helen, in a match of desperation, throws it at her daughter like a dagger. The high quality that Alison thought made her distinctive, her sexual id, is what generated the repressed ache within the household’s life. Fun Home‘s final moment puts Bruce and Alison sitting together in a car, with no elaborate furniture or decorations to hide behind. Maybe now, Alison thinks, the veil between the two can be lifted, and they can see that, at least in one way, they are the same.

Reflecting back on this memory, Alison desperately searches for a glimpse that Bruce would acknowledge the truth about himself. But, after combing over every word, Alison must face the sad fact that he died without ever acknowledging their similarity.

This scene encapsulates why Fun Home retains its impact: the show celebrates our power to remember momentary joys and kindnesses when they first occurred, no matter how fleeting. To free them from being despoiled by whatever knowledge comes after. Memory may be fragile, ripe for revision, but it can also be sustaining. At the show’s conclusion, the stage goes darkish, a cut up second after Alison, as a baby, jumps into her father’s ready arms.

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Hannah Brueske is a senior journalism pupil at Emerson College, with a particular curiosity in function tales, arts reporting, and documentary filmmaking. She is lively in campus publications as a Projects editor for The Berkeley Beacon, Emerson’s solely impartial pupil newspaper and the Editor-in-Chief of The Independent, an arts journal that covers impartial artwork. She simply completed directing her first documentary brief concerning the expertise of switch college students and hopes to work on extra documentary movies quickly. After graduating subsequent December she plans to maneuver to New York City to proceed chasing and contributing to the worlds of artwork and tradition.