REVIEW: Unlocking memories inside The Huntington’s stirring and remarkable ‘Fun Home’
It’s funny what you recall in life.
Memories can be tricky. As time goes by, perspective changes as a person grows, transforming a memory and gradually revealing details once never considered or understood before. Alison’s home seals in cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s intimate memories as she writes her memoirs through her work, ruminating on her childhood and upbringing to discover what makes her feel like she is stuck in life. Alison uses cartoons because drawing as a child, she recalls, ‘I need real things to draw from because I don’t trust memory.’
Five-time Tony award-winning musical Fun Home explores different perceptions of reality within the Bechdel household. They wrestle with it, deny it, but ultimately, must come to terms with it. Based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel memoir with complex direction by Logan Ellis, Taavon Gamble’s dynamic choreography and Jessie Rosso’s compelling music direction, The Huntington continues Fun Home live and in person at the Huntington in Boston, Massachusetts through Sunday, December 14. This poignant musical deals in some mature themes and runs 1 hour and 40 minutes with no intermission. Click here for more information and for tickets.
The Huntington is known for its extraordinary sets and Fun Home is no exception. Beneath a delicately adorned chandelier, Fun Home takes an intimate look inside a family seemingly full of zeal and an antique house so tidy and flawless in all its finery flanked with towering bookshelves, a fireplace, grand piano, detailed wallpaper and richly placed stained glass, it neatly hides any cracks and crevices underneath. Tanya Orellana’s rolling sets meticulously combines Gothic Victorian-style details with Pennsylvania’s natural beauty in a portrait landscape of trees. While Fun Home unveils the Bechdel family’s complicated world piece by piece, it may also quite symbolically depict Alison’s increasing ability to see the forest for the trees.
Led by and musically directed by Jessie Rosso, this intimate, seven piece orchestra sits through an open piece of “sky” carved into the backdrop in a soothing, fiddle-laden soundtrack which blends light, airy, and melancholy. From its opening song, It All Comes Back to the Flying Away finale, Jeanine Tesori’s captivating musical numbers hold a spectrum of rich and multi-faceted meaning. The catchy, Partridge Family-inspired with a hint of Jackson 5 grand number, Rainbow of Love is a particular highlight, enhanced by matching reflective and fringed retro costumes, just a portion of Celeste Jennings’s colorful and era exacting costume design.
With its share of comedic and uplifting moments, Alison looks back on her relationship with her enigmatic and intellectual father Bruce and her traveling and ill at ease mother, Helen. Alison is the only individual that outwardly transforms in this piece, thanks to the exceptional work of Maren Phifer in for Lyla Randall as adorably precocious and impressionable Small Alison in braids and overalls who springs to life in an ingenious manner. Phifer performs an impeccable and chiming version of Ring of Keys and shines with Odin Vega as Christian and Caleb Levin as John in the darkly humorous title track, Fun Home in impressive harmony. Maya Jacobson aptly depicts naïve, anxious, excitable, yet awkward Medium Alison while Sushma Saha is walking confidence as cool and collected Joan.
With black rimmed glasses and short dark hair, Bockel slips into Alison’s wounded façade, a mature, jaded and intellectually-driven individual. With a dark sense of humor, Bockel is an omnipresent narrator on this emotional journey evoking confusion, warmth, sorrow, and frustration realizing every fine detail of Alison’s younger years while struggling to build strength into each new discovery.
Director Logan Ellis strives to examine the physical and intellectual similarities between Alison and Nick Dukart as Alison’s father and it is fascinating to witness their side by side similarities. Duckart allows Bruce’s flaws override what is often viewed as an overtly sympathetic performance. He skillfully lays bares the many sides of Bruce as a critical businessman and showman with a refined intellect, and perpetually occupied to become an expert on most everything. Seemingly a friendly, strict, and hardworking family man, Bruce is also secretive, unsettling, dazed and closed off. Duckart’s melodious and affecting baritenor vocals captures Bruce’s complex and unspoken feelings in each number, including the poignant song Pony Girl, but most notably in his harrowing rendition of Edges of the World.
Each Alison is earnest in portraying their wrought frustration in every moment they attempt to identify and make a genuine connection to him, but especially in the bittersweet song, Telephone Wire. Duckart depicts Bruce with a defensive irritability yet tempered with overpowering warmth for Alison which encapsulates some of the brighter moments in the musical.
Duckart and Jennifer Ellis as Alison’s conflicted musician mother Helen share tense and affective moments together and it is easy to see Helen’s teetering vulnerability within each argument and in all the weighted and lonely moments where Ellis imagines her life should be.
Unassuming, overwhelmed, and misunderstood surrounded by outward perfection, Ellis’s Helen lives her life distancing herself from reality putting others first reflected in the heartrending and beautiful number Days and Days, a number in which Ellis brought me to abrupt tears.
Some things cannot be fixed. Painful and difficult times as well as those joyful moments might not have been as once imagined. The key is to learn from it and take the next step.
The Huntington continues Fun Home live and in person at the Huntington in Boston, Massachusetts through Sunday, December 14. Click here for more information and for tickets.
