Displaying items by tag: alison bechdel

Before Alison Bechdel became famously associated with her “Bechdel Test” for evaluating fiction by how women are portrayed, she published the now classic graphic novel ‘Fun Home’. Through meticulously created panels, Bechdel explores her splintered relationship with her father who died shortly after she came out to him.

Renowned composer Jeanine Tesori collaborated with Lisa Kron to adapt Bechdel’s graphic novel into a stage musical. Following significant rewrites, the 2013 off-Broadway production transferred to Broadway in 2015. The production went on to garner several Tony nominations as well as a nomination for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize.

Porchlight Music Theatre brings ‘Fun Home’ back to Chicago in an all-new revival directed by Stephen Shellhardt. There’s a freshness to this production that strives less for technical perfection but instead for a full-throated sense of emotion. Alanna Chavez leads the cast as the full-grown narrator Allison reflecting back on her childhood, While Patrick Byrnes plays her father Bruce with whom she has a complex relationship. In a series of non-linear memories and heartbreaking songs, ‘Fun Home’ combs through Bechdel’s memories for explanations for her father’s apparent suicide.

This revival isn’t trying to be the Broadway tour and it’s all the better for it. As evidenced by the part of Allison’s mother originated by Judy Kuhn played here by Neala Barron with a wildly different take. Gone is the passive mid-century housewife this part is typically played as. Barron takes Helen in a darker direction that perhaps more accurately captures the suppressed rage flowing through Tesori’s music.

In many ways, ‘Fun Home’ is a story about how emotional abuse as a child impacts the adults we become. Shellhardt’s interpretation doesn’t gloss over the more unsettling details of Bechdel’s relationship with her father. Byrnes gives a cool, but certainly not reserved performance that thrillingly straddles the line between scary and vulnerable.

Small but cleverly dressed staging helps the beautiful harmonies soar. One thing Porchlight can always be counted on for is the music. Even the arrangements seem slightly reinterpreted for this production. As the 100-minute show narrows its focus onto the exact moment Bechdel’s father’s life reached a crisis point, Tesori and Kron’s score goes for the jugular in duets like ‘Telephone Wire’ between Barron and Byrnes.

Though ‘Fun Home’ deals with heavy issues around suicide, closeted homosexuality and dysfunctional family relationships, it’s also a story of queer celebration. Bechdel’s father may not have been comfortable with who he really was, but Bechdel’s life and success is a living testament to shifting generational mores. Thanks to a more tolerant world, Allison Bechdel was able to live her life in a way her father never could.

‘Fun Home’ continues to shine as one of Broadway’s most original queer musicals, specifically because of its female protagonist. The sumptuous music by Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron brings out the bittersweetness of Bechdel’s graphic novel. Porchlight’s version feels as relevant today as ever and in the hands of this well-curated cast, ‘Fun Home’ soars off the stage.

Through March 2 at Porchlight Music Theatre at Ruth Page Center for the Arts. 1016 N Dearborn. (773) 777-9884

Fun Home is not merely a well-crafted, excellent musical in every sense of the word but an important one. Fittingly winning the Tony award for Best Musical the same year same-sex marriage was legalized in the United States, Fun Home is the first Broadway musical to feature a lesbian protagonist. Beyond that, it is also the first musical to discuss homosexuality in such an open way. The main character, Alison, discovers and learns about her own sexuality the same time her father, Bruce, is battling with his. Her coming out of the closet coincides so aptly with his repression into it that it's amazing they didn't run into each other in the doorway. 

Based on writer and cartoonist Alison Bechdel's 2006 graphic memoir of the same name, the story told in Fun Home -- already dramatic and engaging on its own -- becomes that much more poignant due to the fact that it is true. This was Bechdel's life, and it is an extremely personal tale that requires a paradoxical balance of vulnerability and courage to tell.

Non-linear, like Bechdel's memoir, and brimming with intelligence, humor, and frustration, Fun Home is less a typical musical than it is a dramatic play with songs sprinkled in. Where you won't find big show-stopping numbers that burst onto the scene, you'll find elegant, pretty melodies that extend organically from significant moments in the story. The protagonist, Alison, is portrayed by three actresses to encompass her lifespan thus far: Small Al, Middle Al, and Big Al -- or just Al, who is present-day Alison writing and narrating her story.

Her father Bruce serves as both a mirror of and partial antagonist to Alison. As is said in the musical a couple of times, the heart of Fun Home is that Alison and Bruce are "nothing alike" and "exactly alike." Al's relationship with her father is set against the backdrop of their functionally dysfunctional family, with Al's two brothers playing a part as well as Helen, their mother and the long-suffering wife of Bruce. An English teacher, intellectual, and funeral director -- their house doubles as a funeral home, from where the title is derived -- Bruce fusses over every aspect of their family house, improving and embellishing every detail in a clear projection of the lack of control he feels he has over his own life, all the while subjecting the rest of the family to his obsession.

Fun Home doesn't shy away from anything. Big ideas are conveyed through small details, which include everything from the seemingly most mundane aspects of life (like cleaning the house) to the most intimate and even somewhat embarrassing (like after Al's first sexual experience with a girl when she adorably and giddily freaks out, declaring she's "changing [her] major to Joan.") It's funny, poignant, sad, and most of all, honest.

It is the least cheesy musical you will ever see.

On top of its artistic integrity alone, Fun Home is an extremely important musical for LGBT awareness. It brings the (to some, distant or fearsome) ideas of homosexuality and "coming out" to the stage and airs them out in a way that demystifies them and, by default, normalizes them. This is the first step to achieving acceptance: removing fear and saying, "Yes. This is normal. This messed up family that happens to include some gay people is just like your messed up family that happens to include some straight people." It can really be that simple, thanks to shows like Fun Home that are unafraid to be real.

Fun Home is playing at the Oriental Theater through November 13th.