Fine Local Flavor: Well-Drawn 'Fun Home' Fits Wonderfully in a Smaller House -- Chicago Theater Review

Theater Review

Fun Home
Victory Gardens Theatre
at the Biograph, Chicago
Thru November 12
@@@@1/2

One of my great pleasures in life is traveling to New York City and--along with concerts, ballgames, museums, restaurants, bakeries, parks, historic landmarks, random strolling, etc.--going to Broadway shows in bunches.

I've done so several times this century, and while I've also taken in long-running classics and revivals, I have loved seeing shows such as Avenue Q, Wicked, Spring Awakening, Book of Mormon and many others early in their acclaimed Broadway runs.

A good number of musicals do "tryouts" in Chicago prior to moving to Broadway, and national tours bring almost everything that plays on Broadway to the Windy City not long thereafter. (To wit, this year's big, Tony-winning hit, Dear Evan Hansen, should be in Chicago by the end of 2018.)

Photo Credit on all: Liz Lauren

So it's not like those who don't get to NYC haven't the opportunity to see most of the best new shows, in Chicago or even the suburbs as several local self-producing venues stage recent musicals once they're licensed to go regional (as opposed to touring under the auspices of their original Broadway producers).

Still, I find it notable that since the last time I was in New York in March 2015, the musical Fun Home opened on Broadway, earned 12 Tony Award nominations, won five Tonys including Best New Musical, closed on Broadway, mounted a National Tour--that played Chicago in November 2016 and continued through last month--and is now being produced locally by the Victory Gardens Theater.

That's one of the fastest rides along the theatrical life-cycle I can recall, especially for such an acclaimed show.

But not only is Fun Home a musical that deserves to be seen, it is far better suited for smaller local venues--such as the beautifully renovated Biograph Theater that Victory Gardens calls home--than the cavernous downtown ones that tours typically play.

As per my Broadway in Chicago "Balcony Club" subscription, just 10½ months ago I saw Fun Home from the very upper reaches of the resplendent but vast Oriental Theatre, with a capacity of about 2,250.

Though not quite as much as some reviewers or musicals, I greatly enjoyed it, but in my review surmised that greater intimacy might enhance appreciation. (On Broadway, Fun Home ran in the 776-seat Circle in the Square, where about half the seats bracket the stage.)

In the 299-seat auditorium refurbished some years back for Victory Gardens--within the space where John Dillinger famously saw his last movie--Wednesday night I had a seat in the front row, center.

And while I am still bestowing @@@@1/2 as I did for the touring rendition, the proximity--and a stellar local cast under the direction of the routinely superb Gary Griffin--definitely added potency to an excellent but somewhat downbeat musical that frequently feels like a drama.

Based on cartoonist Alison Bechdel's 2006 graphic memoir of the same name, Fun Home centers around a 40-something Alison (terrifically embodied here by the consistently stellar Danni Smith) reflecting back on herself in childhood (played by an excellent Stella Rose Hoyt, alternating with Sage Elliott Harper) and as a college freshmen coming to embrace her gayness (Hannah Starr, also superb).

The bulk of the 90-minute show chronicles the past, including dramatized recollections of Alison's dad Bruce (Rob Lindley, who brings a physical and emotional frailty befitting the role), mother Helen (McKinley Carter, who I've often seen and liked) and brothers (Leo Gonzalez and Preetish Chakraborty).

Danielle Davis, as Alison's college girlfriend Joan is also quite good, as is Joe Lino, who plays several different yet similar young men who factor in ways I will leave for you to discover.

Many of the key narrative aspects of Fun Home aren't meant to be secrets--especially as Bechdel's autobiographical account was a best-seller--and most are revealed early on, but I don't see the need to give away much to the uninitiated.  

I will share that "Fun Home" is the kids' shorthand for the Pennsylvania funeral their father runs--along with being a high school English teacher and home restoration aficionado--and their imagining of a Jackson 5esque commercial for it, "Come to the Fun Home," makes for the musical's most ebullient moment.

With book & lyrics by Lisa Kron and music by Jeanine Tesori, this is about as far from a "tap dancing, robust chorus and flashy production numbers" Broadway musical as the genre gets.

Which is meant much more a compliment than a criticism, as musical theater should continue to extend its boundaries and--like Next to Normal before it, and seemingly Dear Evan Hanson now, though I've only listened to it--Fun Home offers more dramatic heft and poignancy than most musicals (and several plays, for that matter).

And with Tesori also the composer of Thoroughly Modern Millie and other acclaimed shows, there are several splendid songs, including "Ring of Keys" (wonderfully delivered by Hoyt as Small Alison at the performance I attended), "Changing My Major" (a showpiece for Starr as Medium Alison), "Days and Days" (beautifully wrought by Carter as the steadfast wife and mother) and "Telephone Wire," on which Smith shines as the older Alison late in the show.

But though Fun Home once again moved me considerably--and even more so from a far closer vantage point--its relative sparsity of scintillating showtunes likely helps account for why I love it a bit less than my very favorite musicals.

Having now seen the other nominees for the 2015 Best New Musical Tony Award--An American in Paris, Something Rotten! and The Visit, though only the latter on Broadway--I would concur with it meriting the award, even if I might not against competition from other years.

But it's to the considerable credit of Victory Gardens--long one of Chicago's most storied theater companies but not one I've patronized all that often--that it is not only staging its own production of Fun Home so shortly after the Broadway run and first national tour, but seemingly is doing it every bit as well (as far as I could discern or recall from the Equity tour).

...in a far more intimate and appropriate home.

...with tickets starting at just $29 through the box office and discounts available through HotTix, Goldstar and TodayTix.

As such, whether you unabashedly love musicals or are more typically drawn to dramas, this is a Home I highly recommend you visit.

Art Trumps Anguish: Excellent 'Fun Home' Illustrates How Bold Theater Can Reflect, Elevate and Supersede Reality -- Chicago Theater Review

Theater Review

Fun Home
a recent musical on its first National Tour
Oriental Theater, Chicago
Thru November 13
@@@@1/2

The other day I was telling a friend about Fun Home, before having seen it but generally familiar through the cast recording and having read a good deal about the show.

I relayed that it is an autobiographical musical centering around a lesbian cartoonist named Allison Bechdel, who had written a highly-acclaimed graphic memoir on which the musical is based.

Now in her mid-50s but a decade younger when the Fun Home book was published, Bechdel chronicled life growing up in a small Pennsylvania town, with her mom, two brothers and father, a high school English teacher who also ran the family business, the Bechdel Funeral Home (i.e. "fun home").

As revealed in the first few minutes of the Fun Home musical--which is narrated by a fully grown Allison (well-played in Chicago by Kate Shindle) and enacted by Small Allison (around age 10, terrifically embodied by Alessandra Baldacchino) and Medium Allison (a college freshman, the excellent Abby Corrigan)--Allison's father Bruce maintained gay relationships and committed suicide soon after she became aware of this, and her own sexuality, shortly after entering Oberlin College.

In telling my friend about Fun Home, which I would see and greatly enjoy on Wednesday night, she noted that it seemed like an odd subject for a musical.

And within the still largely apt parlance of a musical containing "show tunes," chorus lines, choreography, etc., I fully understand the comment and incredulity.

But with occasional exceptions going back much further, over the past decade the boundaries of musical theater have considerably widened, whether in bringing new sounds into the idiom--such as in Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights and Hamilton--and in the rise of musicals that are largely dramatic and about weighty subjects, notably Spring Awakening, Next to Normal and Fun Home, which won the 2015 Tony Award for the Best New Musical.

Especially in neither being based on popular movies nor featuring well-known pop songs, these dramatic musicals offer exciting deviations from more traditional musicals, whether new or old.

I love any musical worth its salt, but as with Spring Awakening, Next to Normal and Hamilton, I imagine Fun Home should greatly appeal to "serious theater lovers" perhaps generally adverse to more typical song & dance musicals.

With a score by Jeanine Tesori, who also wrote the music for Thoroughly Magnificent Millie, Caroline, or Change, Shrek: The Musicals and others--complemented by lyrics by Lisa Kron, who also penned the show's book--Fun Home certainly has several fine songs.

But with deference to some outstanding performances on tunes pivotal to the artistic enterprise, the greatness of Fun Home is more so found in its storytelling, structure and poignancy.

Perhaps because of this, and even some slow pacing within a one-act musical just 100 minutes long, I can't say I loved Fun Home quite as much as Hamilton, or even another non-traditional musical I recently saw called Come From Away, in which more of the songs were overtly infectious.

I also imagine the show might've been much better appreciated up close at Broadway's intimate Circle in the Square than from the balcony of Chicago's cavernous Oriental Theater.  

But whether it's best described as a dramatic musical, an autobiographical play with somber overtones set to music or simply a unique work of theater, Fun Home is, at the very least, terrific.

It's almost impossible not to be moved by Bechdel's recollections of childhood beratings by of her father, her realization and embrace of her own gayness, learning about her dad's hidden life, the coping of her mother (empathetically played by Chicagoland stage veteran, Susan Moniz), her father's death and her own life ever since.

But as adapted by Kron, the show also has considerable humor, and from the Jackson 5ish romp of "Come to the Fun Home," as Small Allison and her brothers create a mock commercial for the funeral home, to songs of sexual awakening ("Changing My Major," "Ring of Keys") to touching introspective tunes by both the mother (Moniz shines on "Days and Days") and father ("Edges of the World" nicely handled by Robert Petkoff as Bruce Bechdel), the music hits many high notes.

While the concept of multiple actresses playing the same character, sometimes onstage simultaneously, might sound like it could get confusing, under the Tony-winning direction of Sam Gold, it never is, and works rather uniquely and effectively.

And while five members of the Broadway cast were nominated for Tony Awards--including all 3 "Allison" actresses--in terms of both acting and singing those in the first national tour cast seemed as good as one could hope.

Shindle, a Northwestern grad, former Miss America and Broadway vet, is really good as the real-time Allison, and Petkoff--who I've seen in Sondheim musicals at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater--brings nice nuance to the difficult role of her cultured, conflicted, harsh, technically even criminal (he has some dalliances with teenage boys) but clearly beloved father.

As the two younger Allisons, Corrigan and Baldacchino are also rather superb.

Although Fun Home didn't quite blow me away to @@@@@ fulfillment--and unless one prefers darker, dramatic, non-traditional musicals, I wouldn't insist you go see it before the Chicago run ends on Sunday--I look forward to seeing it sometime down the road in a smaller setting.

And on the night after Donald Trump won the presidency, it served as a reiteration that art will be our salvation, that beauty can eclipse darkness and that even a rather solemn musical can be uplifting and inspiring at times when real life isn't.

As Shindle said post-show in soliciting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS donations, "We are not going back. We will not return to the world that killed Bruce Bechdel."

Daring yet open-hearted musicals like Fun Home will help see to that.