Top Five Songs: Fun Home

A little more Fun Home for you, today focusing on the musical’s excellent score.  For a show that doesn’t have a ton of numbers in it (a good chunk of the cast recording is dialogue tracks,) it was still tough narrowing it down to a top five.  Ask me tomorrow and one or two might be swapped out for others, but right now, these are my favorites.

“It All Comes Back” – The opening number.  From young Alison’s request to play “airplane,” to Bruce’s devoted love of restoration, to adult Alison’s first steps into memoir writing, each element is brought fantastically to life.  The music twists and molds to fit the situation, and the lyrics are at once simple but earnest, yearning and frank.

Best line:  “I love how tarnish melts away, / Opening to luster.”

“Welcome to Our House on Maple Avenue” – As the Bechdels prepare for an important house showing, this frantic, pattery number shows how Bruce’s punctilious anxiety infects the whole family.  At the mercy of his precision, young Alison, her mother, and her brothers sweat to arrange the house exactly to Bruce’s vision.

Best line:  “Welcome to our house on Maple Avenue! / See how we polish and we shine? / We rearrange and realign. / Everything is balanced and serene, / Like chaos never happens if it’s never seen.”

“Maps” – This is a definite theme number taken straight from the pages of the book, and I really love it.  In it, adult Alison cuts out the stories and versions of truth Bruce has told her, instead making a sparse, honest map of his dad’s life.  She sees the smallness of it and ponders whether, had he ventured out of the tiny sphere of his existence, his life might have turned out differently.

Best line:  “You were born on this farm; / Here’s our house; / Here’s the spot where you died. / […] I can draw a circle – / You lived your life inside.”

“Ring of Keys” – I already mentioned this song as one of my Top Five Tony performances, but it deserves another mention.  It’s just sublime, a perfect articulation of young Alison’s confused feeling of homecoming and kinship upon seeing her first butch woman.  I love it to pieces.

Best line:  “It’s probably conceited to say, / But I think we’re alike in a certain way.”

“Telephone Wire” – For once, adult Alison stops recording and narrating.  She steps into the memory of her last conversation with Bruce, a nighttime drive pregnant with everything they’re not saying to one another.  The fitful melody on Bruce’s awkward starts and stops perfectly matches his state of mind, and Alison’s desperation to make a connection with Bruce is palpable in its longing.

Best line:  “Say something, / Talk to him! / Say something, / Anything! / At the light, at the light, at the light, at the light […] / Doesn’t matter what you say, / Just make the fear in his eyes go away.”