Fun Home (2015)

Aaaaand, now it’s time for the musical!  All in all, I’d say that, as an adaptation, it’s fairly different from the book, but both are excellent in their own ways.  For instance, the musical doesn’t seem to be as cerebral, but it feels a little more soulful, open in a very unguarded manner.

Covering the same basic ground as the graphic memoir, the musical splits its narrative into three sections that interweave and overlap:  Alison as a child, growing up with her inscrutable father; Alison as a college freshman, discovering first her own sexuality and then her dad’s, and Alison as an adult, sorting through her memories of her dad and trying to write/draw the book.  The scope is more contained, and a number of details are cut to keep things tidy (and make room for the songs, of course,) but it’s the same story at its heart.

Much of the music focuses more on theme than plot progression, which, for a show like this, really works.  There’s the uneasy way everyone in the house tiptoes around Bruce’s temper and conforms to his aesthetic demands (“Welcome to Our House on Maple Ave.”)  Alison looking back and trying to figure out what her dad’s life added up to (“Maps.”)  Alison coming beautifully and ecstatically alive as she starts to know herself (“I’m Changing My Major” and “Ring of Keys.”)  Alison’s mother Helen attempting to explain why she’s lived the way she has for so long (“Days and Days.”)

As far as the songs go, Jeanine Tesori’s score is lovely, understated modern Broadway.  Every score of hers that I’ve heard so far sounds fantastically different – she’s a very fluid composer, shaping her music to fit her show.  She plays with a few styles here, most frequently returning to a stripped-down, emotionally open sound.  Lisa Kron’s lyrics match the score wonderfully.  Again, her work is so open, so honest.  The musical is earnest in a different way than the book, simpler but no less powerful.  For me, some of the best moments are those that come most directly from the book, like the delightful opening of young Alison playing “airplane” with Bruce in “It All Comes Back” or the adult Alison plotting the narrow span of Bruce’s entire life in “Maps.”

Another thing the musical really seems to do well is showing how Bruce’s punctiliousness is partly in response to his anxiety about people’s perception of him, his desire to hide; likewise, it strikingly highlights the ways his fear and insecurity informs how he parents young Alison.  For example, when she rails against having to wear a dress for a party, he doesn’t just tell her to wear it because he says so, and he doesn’t stop with pointing out that all the other girls will be in dresses.  No, he hammers home the fact that everyone would laugh at and talk about her, then passively-aggressively offers to wait, claiming it makes no difference to him if she still wants to change.  Scenes like this are so affecting, even more so than the more overt anger or physical punishment.  They show how deeply Bruce’s closeted life constricts him, as well as the myriad small ways that he’s passing that internalized shame on to his daughter.

Warnings

Language, sexual content, violence, drinking, and thematic elements.