Fun Home

Fun Home, the new Broadway musical based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel of the same name, is an incredible, indelible piece of theater. Fun Home, a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize, features music by Jeanine Tesori and book and lyrics by Lisa Kron, both nominated for Tony Awards for their work. The recognition is well deserved; Fun Home’s score and book are among the most incisive and clear of the season, bringing the Bechdels to jolting, vivid life at the Circle in the Square Theatre.

Tesori, the only female composer to have had two musicals running at the same time on Broadway, notes that in Fun Home, as in life, “party is right next to pain.” The show is performed in the round, so that viewers can see other audience members watching the action. Not only does this directorial choice emphasize the nature of life in a small town, it also mimics family dynamics. Fun Home, like family life, can be seen a hundred different ways from many different points of view. It’s apt for a show that embraces the impossibilities of life; that kids can play on top of funeral home coffins, that cartoons are a real art form, and that fathers don’t always know how to love their children.

These messages are skillfully delivered by the Fun Home cast, which is nominated for five Tony Awards in total. Three actresses portray Alison Bechdel in three different stages of her life: Sydney Lucas (Small Alison), Emily Skeggs (Medium Alison), and Beth Malone (Alison). Over the course of the hour and 40 minute long show, Lucas, Skeggs, and Malone recreate Ms. Bechdel’s evolving relationship with her parents, played skillfully by Michael Cerveris and Judy Kuhn. “I can’t even use the word surreal anymore,” comments the real Alison Bechdel, as she is known at the Circle in the Square, on the existence and the success of Fun Home. Surreal is one way to put it.