Fun Home, the Musical

The Public Theatre put on stage Alison Bechdel's graphic novel Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic as one of its Public Lab program.  I saw it this afternoon, the last day of its run, and was duly impressed, though it received no critical attention in the New York press. Before going, I was doubtful of its success; I couldn’t imagine how this intellectually intricate memoir could be staged.  The author explores her quest to come to terms with her father’s life and death and records it in sophisticated and richly detailed drawings combined with thought-provoking prose and learned literary allusions.  Inevitably, the staged version was an abridged edition; still the main themes of the book were effectively captured in the adaptation.  Lisa Kron, author of and one of the Five Lesbian Brothers, whose I saw in 2005, wrote the lyric, and the talented musician, Jeanine Tesori, composed the music.  A cast of nine sang and acted on the piano accompaniment; Sam Gold directed it with a sure hand.  The musical format, in fact, made it possible for the stage version to intersect the past and the present, as in the book.  On one side of the stage was the table at which Bechdel was at work drawing, and on the other a versatile interior of the Funeral Home, where past events were enacted with Alison now as a young girl and now as a teenager.  The production used projections, some of Alison's childish drawings as well as some from the book.  The actors in the role of Bruce and Helen, Alison's parents, as well as Alison herself, not only were excellent; they looked amazingly like them as we know them from the book, as did the baby sitter Roy.  A child actor Sydney Lucas as Small Alison was sprightly and confident in her acting no less than in her singing. The music was expressive; the songs dramatic.  Obviously, Bechdel's memoir can not be condensed into a two-hour musical; the texture of details was lost and missed.  But the artist-author’s memory salvaged in momentous fragments and joined in staggered time sequence is fully recreated and very memorably.