Review: Extraordinary Tony Award Winning FUN HOME Plays the Ahmanson
By: Don Grigware Feb. 24, 2017
Fun Home/book & lyrics by Lisa Kron/music by Jeanine Tesori/directed by Sam Gold/Ahmanson Theatre/through April 1
Finally an extraordinary musical that is high on substance and heart as well as entertainment value! 2015's Tony Winning Best Musical Fun Home is based on Alison Bechdel's graphic novel Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. The Bechdels are hardly your run.of.the.mill dysfunctional family, living in Pennsylvania. Cartoonist Alison (Kate Shindle) is trying to draw her father Bruce (Robert Petkoff) and to understand why he committed suicide. Currently onstage at the Ahamsnon Theatre through April 1, Fun Home with its emotionally engaging book by Lisa Kron and curiously vibrant music score by Jeanine Tesori, boasts seamless direction from Sam Gold and a wonderfully sensitive cast.
One of the best features of Fun Home is that we see Alison at three different ages, as she tries to relate to her father. As well as Shindle, there are Abby Corrigan as Medium Alison and Alessandra Baldacchino (Carly Gold covering certain performances) as Small Alison. Three different perspectives simultaneously of a renaissance man who was an English teacher, a funeral director and an ingenious restorer of old houses. The action takes place in the 60s, so Bruce was in the closet about his homosexuality. His long suffering wife Helen (Susan Moniz) knew but he had never discussed it with her. As Alison discovers in college that she is attracted to another woman Joan (Karen Eilbacher), she doesn't understand the roots of her lesbianism, but proceeds to openly confront her parents. Thus, the beginning of her quest to uncover the truth about her father.
When Fun Home was first produced in New York it was done in the three-quarter on a thrust stage, which brought the characters, especially older Alison closer to the audience. On the Ahmanson's proscenium stage, Alison is omnipresent but off to the side or behind, so it is more challenging to view every emotional reaction. That aside, the play works efficiently as its flashbacks never really seem like flashbacks. The audience sees all three Alisons onstage simultaneously, so the analysis of the perplexities of the relationships has a much clearer focus. Older Alison looks center stage and sees Small Alison and her younger brothers (Pierson Salvador and Lennon Nate Hammond) playing in the funeral home around an open casket as they are simulating a commercial for their establishment and then soon after she looks stage left as Medium Alison is chatting and engaging in sex with Joan at college. There is great fluidity of time and place established within older Alison's mind without the slightest distraction for the viewers due to Kron's fine writing, and to Gold's optimal staging.
Medium Alison comes home to introduce Joan to her parents. Bruce, who has always abhorred labels, accepts her without uttering a word about his own divergences. Helen, on the other hand, is aghast, particularly for Alison, who she fears will end up uncommunicative and miserable like her father. Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron have written the most gorgeous sung monologue for Helen in which she pours her heart out to Alison about love and loss. Alison's silent ride with her father where she prays for just a word or two from him is also beautifully musicalized by Kron and Tesori. These poignant lyrical moments in the score so capture the frustration, pain and isolation of all the family members.
The ensemble of Fun Home are top-notch. Baldacchino has s strong voice and is really the most heartbreaking of the Alisons in her initial attempts to reach her father. Shindle also possesses a beautiful voice and as the narrator pulls us in and makes us relate to her anguish and to her eventual acceptance of things as they are. Moniz is stellar in conveying her inner turmoil over the life she has surrendered. Petkoff has the most difficult role, and he handles it sublimely by never letting Bruce give in to his loneliness or discomfort. Eilbacher is the perfect foil for Medium Alison's innocence. Corrigan, Salvador, and Hammond, all add nice touches to the piece's playful moments, and Robert Hager completes the terrific cast in a variety of smaller but significant roles.
On a personal note, I never really got to know my father. As much as I loved him, he remains a mystery to me... but, I can relate and felt a strong bond with Alison and her search for self-fulfillment.
A few words about David Zinn's amazing set for the living room of the restored house. I will not describe it or how it makes its appearance, but watch and basque in its elegance!
The title Fun Home says it all. It is different in every way from most dysfunctional plays or musicals. Its story is about being gay and trying to understand the whys and wherefores, but it never settles for an easy answer. As in life, it has comedic and tragic moments in abundance, and let's you experience them fully through its exceptional storytelling and lyrical music. Don't miss it!
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