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Let's start with the good, of which there is plenty. The story is drawn from cartoonist Alison Bechdel's 2006 graphical memoir of the same title, in which she recounts discovering her sexuality and that of her father, Bruce, just months before his apparent suicide. Factor in his dual careers as high school English teacher and funeral home manager (hence the title), his avocation of restoring his Victorian house, and raising three children while conducting a years-long affair with his handyman, and Kron and Tesori have a nearly bottomless well of possibilities from which to draw. Even so, they go above and beyond. In her lyrics, Kron deftly blends poetry with the pedantic language of the everyday, demonstrating how extraordinary situations bring out extraordinary interpretations from ordinary people. Dialogue melts seamlessly into song, weaving the bewitching texture of the show's overarching question: about just how normal the most normal-sounding family actually is. The Bechdels, who accept their normality on faith in the opening scene, prove to be anything but as Alison and her father come into their own, and mom Helen watches helplessly from the sidelines as their burgeoning individuality threatens to crush her. Tesori matches Kron at every step, with music that alternately skips and soars as it investigates these people. Her early compositions are the musical equivalent of Norman Rockwell paintings: homey, comfortable, and traditionally melodic. But slowly the sound becomes anxious, darker, and more distant, reflecting the familial bonds that are snapping left and right. This is Tesori at her most varied and alluring, as surprising and satisfying as her music for Violet while sounding nothing at all like it or her scores for the serious-minded Caroline, or Change or the bouncier, more commercial Shrek or Thoroughly Modern Millie. Writing as if sharing a soul, Kron and Tesori fuse their considerable talents into a remarkably consistent and compelling universe. Lengthy musical monologues are at once disjointed and accessible; contrapuntal duets and group scenes, most notably in the few minutes when the older Alison is suddenly set upon by a crash of conflicting recollections, suavely expand the scope of the show while keeping it intimate; and though pain and loss are common, there's just as much room for levity—the highlight of all the highlights occurs when the young Alison and her brother and sister perform a side-splitting dance commercial for the funeral home. Most important, everyone is completely believable. Bruce is not allowed to devolve into pure caricature, for example, even when secretly trolling for sailors during a Fleet Week trip to Manhattan; mom has her say when she needs it, but not a second before; and Alison, whether we see her as a child, a college freshman, or an adult, is as critical of the life she's creating for herself, and trying to record through her drawings, as she is of the people she draws. No one is let off the hook, so everyone impresses.
The performances are impeccable, too. Established veterans Michael Cerveris and Judy Kuhn thrill as Alison's parents, portraying the deeply sincere but deeply troubled people who want to maintain their crumbling façade as long as they can. Cerveris's Bruce looks forever uncomfortable inside his own body and Kuhn's Helen as though she's spent decades carrying the world on her shoulders, but both convey the complex brew of love and hardship that's so integral to the couple's lives. Beth Malone and Alexandra Socha are superb as the older two Alisons, finding the subtle shadings and the stunted emotions that define this woman who did not grow up as she expected to. As the youngest Alison, Sydney Lucas is a searing firebrand of talent, fierce, honest, and funny, though (through no fault of her own) it's hard to see how her Alison could grow up to be Socha's or Malone's. The rest of the ensemble, which includes Griffin Birney and Noah Hinsdale as Alison's siblings, Roberta Colindrez as her first college girlfriend, and Joel Perez as Bruce's lover, is excellent as well. So where does Fun Home go wrong? Nowhere—and everywhere. For its myriad virtues, it stops short of establishing the universal connection that great writing needs to become great theatre. In her book, Bechdel supplied an approachable, recognizable innocence through her artwork that translated her one-of-a-kind upbringing into a language anyone could understand. The drawings' at once shrinking and exaggerated quality made them both more fantastic and more realistic, which made them ideal vessels for carrying difficult truths. But something changes when the comics come alive. Losing that layer of magic means that Alison's struggles don't resonate and develop the way we need them to, and because Kron and Tesori haven't devised a theatrical equivalent, the events remain mundane and without spark. It may be gloriously musicalized and agonizingly specific, but it's inert: Unless you're a lesbian cartoonist who didn't bond with her gay funeral-director-interior-designer father before he stepped in front of an oncoming truck, nothing here cuts the skin or even bruises. I was entranced by the writing's towering quality even as I was left utterly cold by it—the catharsis I craved, that would identify a reason for all this beyond strict narrative, never arrived. This precisely crafted jewel of infinite detail sadly neither speaks nor sees beyond arm's length. To anyone who wants to know the current state of the art for intelligent, adult musical theatre writing, I can recommend no show more highly. But if you believe musicals should inspire in you deeper feelings and ignite self-examination, then you may as well stay away. That's the only thing Fun Home doesn't do spectacularly.
Fun Home
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