The new musical “Fun Home” is a welcome addition to musical theater, a genre which has produced surprisingly few works about the LGBTQ community lately. However, “Fun,” an adaptation of the award-winning graphic novel of the same name, details Alison Bechdel’s experiences with coming out to her family and the suicide of her father, which happened four months later.
The show recreates the world crafted by Bechdel’s graphic novel by following the story of Alison at three different stages of her life. We see Adult Alison (Beth Malone) for most of the show as she remembers the past while preparing to write her graphic novel. She revisits her childhood and young adult years through the likes of Small Alison (Sydney Lucas) and Medium Alison (Alexandra Socha) as they write the journal entries adult Alison is now basing her graphic novel upon.
This unique look into the life of Bechdel allows the audience to view her through different phases portrayed on a stage. Small Alison wasn’t aware she was gay, yet she sings about being a superhero and saving the damsel in distress. Meanwhile, Medium Alison has just arrived at college and is discovering her sexuality for the first time sings after her first sexual experience.
But the story isn’t just about Alison. It is also about her coming to terms with her father and his mistakes. The title “Fun Home” comes from the abbreviation of a funeral home, her father’s business and the place where Alison and her three brothers grew up. Unbeknownst to the children, their father, portrayed by Michael Cerveris, was closeted himself and often had affairs with students from the high school English class he teaches. The interactions between Alison and her father are all part of the mystery that Alison is trying to solve — the question of who her father was.
While the story is completely riveting and captivating, there is something lacking throughout the performance. From the start, the story is outlined by an opening statement from Alison — “Dad and I both grew up in the same small Pennsylvania town. And he was gay, and I was gay, and he killed himself, and I became a lesbian cartoonist.” The sense of mystery that is often present in musical theater is gone and the path is set from the beginning.
While the music is often a welcome break from the seriousness of the subject matter, such as the commercial jingle that Small Alison and her brothers write for the funeral home, there are a few songs that seem to have been thrown in simply for a melodic break. Despite the few moments that don’t entirely hit their beats, there is something heartfelt about a show that is as close to an accurate representation of coming out as a show can be.
The Fun Home is playing now at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St.
A version of this article appeared in the Wednesday, Nov. 6 print edition. Bailey Ayers is a staff writer. Email her at [email protected].
