“Fun Home” brings powerful theatre experience to Circle Theatre stage
The Tony Award-winning musical adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel, a memoir detailing a young lesbian woman’s memories of her coming out story and her dysfunctional family upbringing, is the Michigan community premiere.
Sometimes the most distinguishing feature of a story is the way it is told. Such is the case with “Fun Home,” the musical adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel, a memoir detailing a young lesbian woman’s discovery of her sexuality.
In the Michigan community premiere of “Fun Home,” Circle Theatre brings this story to the stage in a moving production that will command the audience’s emotional attention and provide a powerful experience in the theatre.
With book and lyrics by Lisa Kron and music by Jeanine Tesori, this Tony Award winning musical is constructed around writer/illustrator Alison Bechdel’s quest for understanding of and perspective on sexual identity—and her dysfunctional family. Alison’s search to shed light on her past and that of her family is hard-charging, unflinching, and generates material with adult themes and sexual content.
One unusual aspect of the story’s presentation is use of depiction of the author at three ages: Older Alison, portrayed in her 40s and played by Eirann Betka; college age Middle Alison, played by Madeline Jones; and pre-teen Small Alison, played by Evangeline Vander Ark.
The Older Alison, now a cartoonist, sets the tone early on with a matter of fact reveal devoid of any spoiler alerts. She tells the audience that she is gay and that her father, a closeted homosexual, committed suicide not long after she came out.
On the heels of this revelation, and with the help of a few objects filled with memories, Alison revisits key moments in her past. She does so not necessarily in chronological order.
As the older Alison sees scenes from her youth unfold before her, she sketches them on the pages of the graphic novel in progress at her drawing table. Eirann Betka brings curiosity to this role, and wisely withholds judgement on the action she beholds.
Betka frequently moves in or around the scenes that appear, holding a prop or assisting a younger self. She willingly joins her family in singing “Welcome to Our House on Maple Avenue,” a song that introduces the Victorian structure that serves as home and the exacting standards of the father who operates a funeral home, which the family calls the “fun home,” within its walls.
Other times she watches helplessly from a distance as Small Allison and her mother, Helen, are buffeted by emotional blows and harsh words from her tyrannical father, Bruce. Jason Morrison provides a sensitive, yet gut wrenching portrayal of a dislikable man caught between two identities. As he delivers “Edges of the World,” shortly before his character’s demise under the wheels of a bus, Morrison shows us the torment of one who understands that the lie he is living prevents him from being true to either himself or his family.
Caitlin Cusack, as Alison’s mother Helen, delivers “Days and Days,” a convincing and poignant apology to her daughter for the sham of a marriage she had participated in.
Other standouts include Evangeline Vander Ark as Small Alison, who gives us an inquisitive and spirited young soul that prefigures the Alison of later years. Her searing rendition of “Ring of Keys” details her attraction to the quiet strength and non-feminine ways of a lace-booted delivery woman noticed only by Small Alison.
Madeline Jones, as Medium Alison, is quite adept at handling the embarrassing moments of sexual awakening and discovery at college. Her unbridled infatuation with a new love interest is clearly delineated in “Changing My Major.” Jones also provides a believable and appropriately awkward coming-out homecoming before her parents at semester’s end.
Although “Fun Home” demands staging, design, and musical elements that allow the action to flow across time and space, Circle Theatre’s production team was up to the challenge in Tuesday evening’s invited dress rehearsal.
Director/Choreographer Jolene Frankey’s stage pictures and blocking tell Alison’s story and most importantly clarify her relationship in each scene with those who emerge from the past. Catherine Marlett Dreher’s lighting supports the show’s multiple shifts in time, place, and tone.
Don Wilson’s scenic design takes center stage with its striking array of tilted white rectangles that loom over the characters and the three quarters thrust playing space. These geometric forms indicate the windows and doors of the house that serves as a funeral home and family abode, as well as portals to the memories that Alison visits and revisits. The hopscotch overlay of white rectangles on the stage surface suggests the life puzzle that Allison attempts to solve. Finally, the corners of the stark prolific shapes in Wilson’s design defy the act of closure that Alison, by her own admission, struggles to complete in her memoir’s illustrations: drawing a circle.
“Fun Home”
Book and Lyrics by Lisa Kron
Music by Jeanine Tesori
On stage at Grand Rapids Circle Theatre
July 12–14, 18–21, and 25–28 at 7:30 p.m. and July 22 at 5 p.m.
Tickets start at $26; rush tickets available night of performances for $13.
Purchase tickets available online here or at the Circle Theatre box office.
