A stellar cast sings and dances the audience to ecstatic heartbreak
18 April 2018

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by Cylla von Tiedemann

The power of musical theatre is that it gets to layer song and dance atop the text to deliver maximum emotional impact. With Fun Home, an already powerful text gets an insightful musical lift and a conceptual framework that works on the subconscious. Just as the Bechdal family struggles to maintain a facade of family bliss - the mother sings "Everything is balanced and serene/Like chaos never happens if it's never seen" - Fun Home provides a jaunty musical number every time the plot gets too intense.

That works not only as exuberant entertainment - and no-one will be able to resist either the funeral home jingle or the '70s variety show number - but also by deepening the tragedy by contrasting and contradicting the plot. The result is not only an urge to sing and clap-a-long, but also tears. By the finale there was not a dry eye in the house. And not an audience member without a smile of catharsis.

Fun Home centers on the struggle of Alison Bechdel to create her autobiographical graphic novel Fun Home. Her search through her memories conjure up her childhood self and also herself in college as she comes out as a lesbian. All of this is complicated by her relationship with her father who is also closeted and has an inappropriate taste for young men, particularly the high school students he teaches. The deep sorrow at the core of Fun Home is that the two never manage to talk about it before it all explodes in tragedy.

All three Alisons are superb. Laura Condlln (An Enemy of the People, Sextet) as the contemporary "Allison" is never offstage, always watching the action, commenting and harmonizing, until she gets to unleash her emotions in an extraordinary, conflicted number and then again in the finale. Sara Farb as "Medium Alison" not only has crack comic timing during the coming out process, but also sends the best song, "Changing My Major," into the stratosphere. It is unforgettable. Somehow Hannah Levinson (The Sound of Music) as "Small Alison" avoids all the pitfalls of child actors. Her rendition of nascent lesbian desire upon encountering a butch, is so nuanced and perfectly pitched that it is startling, and a little scary, to watch.

Cynthia Dale builds a multitude of tiny moments to a shattering climax in her big number, letting her barely contained bitterness boil over in a cascade of gorgeous knife-edged notes. That was my only frustration with Fun Home. With so much talent, so many remarkable voices, onstage, the pleasure of big numbers where voices are given a chance to strut, are subsumed to the demands of the plot and themes. This was particularly acute when Evan Buliung (The Audience) first sings. His deep voice is thrilling and filled the room, raising the hairs on the back of my neck, but the father is repressed and possibly obsessive-compulsive so Buliung is forced to restrain and settle for creating a multi-faceted man who moves the audience to the edge of despair.

Special thanks must be given to director Robert McQueen (Falsettos), music director Reza Jacobs (The Wizard of Oz, Falsettos, London Road, Assassins, Same Same But Different) and sound designer Michael Laird (Onegin, Once on This Island, Evil Dead the Musical) have somehow conquered the acoustics of the CAA Theatre. Every note is crystal clear so the catchy score by Jeanine Tesori (featuring a rising clarinet motif echoed by a violin that musicalizes the metaphor of desire that it represents) and the clever lyrics by Lisa Kron reach the audience in the way they were intended. This benefits not only the star players but also Jasper Lincoln and Liam MacDonald who, with Levinson, get to wow the audience with "Come to the Fun Home," before, as with all brothers in a lesbian drama, fading into the background.

There are also two supporting roles where objects of desire are required. Lesbian lust is ignited by the genial Sabryn Rock (Obeah Opera, Once on This Island) of whom it is completely believable that she would inspire Alison, who insists she is "asexual," to come out. And to change her major. Eric Morin (Hello Again, Falsettos) is delicious as the hunky but half-witted men who the father seduces, and gets to shine uproariously as Small Alison's fantasy teen idol. An exceptionally strong cast has been assembled for Fun Home and they inhabit the Bechdel family home with living, breathing people who we are honoured to get to know.

Builiung sings of restoring an old house, covering the damage with the beauty that is hidden within "when the sunlight hits the parlour wall." It echoes his previous arias where he struggles to convince himself that he "might still break a heart or two." Fun Home revels in the beauty, reveals the damage, and gloriously breaks every heart in the audience.