SpeakEasy "Fun Home": Home Run Returns June 8-30

Marissa Simeqi & Todd Yard in "Fun Home"
(photo: Nile Hawyer/Nile Scott Shots)

“What would happen if we spoke the truth?”

Caption: That is the existential question posed by Alison Bechdel in her graphic novel based on her true-life story of growing up in a funeral home, (hence the title Fun Home), upon which the musical of the same name was subsequently based. This brilliant adaption, currently being performed by SpeakEasy Stage Company, is faithful to its sources. Its Broadway production in 2015 (after its off-Broadway successful run in 2013), with Book and Lyrics by Lisa Kron and Music by Jeanine Tesori, was nominated for twelve Tony Awards, winning five, including Best Musical, Book, and Score. It holds the distinction of being the first musical in Broadway history to feature an out lesbian protagonist. The entire story is told in non-linear flashbacks by the adult 43-year-old character of Alison Bechdel (Amy Jo Jackson) via numerous songs, some of them quite brief and more like operatic recitative. Never fear, however, for this smart and insightful creation is very approachable, often true to the “fun” in its name, and irresistibly honest. As it was performed in its original productions in New York, this version is presented in the round (or more precisely, three-quarter-round), which is often a treacherous decision in the wrong hands that cannot prevent audience members missing action when faced with an actor's back.

Merissa Simeqi, Amy Jo Jackson & Ellie van Amerongen in "Fun Home"
(photo: Nile Hawyer/Nile Scott Shots)

Fortunately, we're on firm ground and in great hands in this production, as it's directed by the company's Producing Artistic Director, Paul Daigneault, one of Boston's always-dependable creative minds. He meets the challenge of theater in the surround by and large without compromising any seat in the house, keeping his cast consistently alert and oriented. Alison is played by three actresses who present her story at three stages of her life: 19 year old Medium Alison (Ellie van Amerongen), 9 year old Small Alison (Marissa Simeqi), and the adult Alison who provides most of the narration. The rest of the family consists of her father Bruce (Todd Yard), her mother Helen (Laura Marie Duncan) and her brothers Christian (Cameron Levesque) and John (Luke Gold). Also featured are Desire Graham as Joan and Christopher M. Ramirez in several roles, as Roy, Pete, Mark, Bobby and Jeremy. In the space of just one hour and forty minutes, with no intermission, we learn an uncanny amount of insight into this intimate community. Much of the success of this work is due to the extraordinary journey taken over five years by Kron and Tesori as they honed the storytelling and developed the musical medium in which to tell it, as an impressionistic memoir by an artist who rebelled by becoming a lesbian cartoonist.

Todd Yard in "Fun Home"
(photo: Nile Hawyer/Nile Scott Shots)

The story begins with a scene of a father/daughter airplane game. In emotional rather than strict chronology, we come to learn that Bruce is obsessed with renovation of his material world while unable to reconstruct or escape his closeted self, yearning for the courage that his daughter exhibits in her independence in his song Pony Girl: “some folks get the call to go, some folks are bound to stay.”  Helen has spent their married life in virtual denial, as she cries out to her daughter in the song Days and Days: “I didn't raise you to give away your days like me” and “chaos never happens if it's never seen". Small Alison longs to express herself as she becomes aware of another female with a “Ring of Keys” that simultaneously promise and threaten to unlock her developing desires. Medium Alison begins to accept who and what she is as she sings that she is Changing (Her) Major to Joan. The time frame (the 70's and 80's) in part defines how each character comes out or remains closeted. This father and daughter epitomize two very different people, one a prisoner of his times and generation; the other enjoying her new found freedoms and visibility. There evolves yet another existential question: how many times can the members of one cast in one performance break your heart?

The Cast of "Fun Home"
(photo: Nile Hawyer/Nile Scott Shots)

And this well-knit cast does exactly that, time and again, with their bravery in sharing their perception and enlightened comprehension of what lies beneath the surface of cosmic issues in microcosm. The three Alisons and her parents, and their growth or stasis, are obviously crucial to realizing what's at the core of the story. None of them disappoints, and each gets a perfect aria to reveal what is at stake; Yard, Simeqi, van Amerongen, Jackson, and Duncan each give award-worthy turns, and Graham gives fine support. And attention must be paid to the exquisitely expressive work in the Music Direction of Matthew Stern, as well as the other creative elements, from the Set Design by Cristina Todesco, to the brief Choreography by Sarah Crane, Costume Design by Charles Schoonmaker, Lighting Design by Karen Perlow and Sound Design by Andrew Duncan Will.

Tesori spoke about these characters as real people who “could not find a way to sing, and children who were trying to sing the song of the parents who didn't have the form and structure to sing” but did have “the desire to acknowledge and accept one's truth.” And Kron described both Alison and her father as having “stood on the precipice of becoming the person they wanted to be...but in order to do that, you have to be willing to go through humiliation. If you're going to become a different person...you must become someone you cannot control, and that is humiliating...that's not bearable”. And there remains one last existential question: if one keeps noting that every SpeakEasy production is even more sublime theater than the last, will readers' eyes glaze over and eventually lose their trust, and thus if a review falls on deaf eyes, does it make a noise or any impact? Caption: it must be said that this is SpeakEasy and Daigneault at their best, making this the show you owe it to yourself to see, even as it breaks your heart too many times to count with its fierce and revelatory truth.

 

Marissa Simeqi & Todd Yard in "Fun Home"
(photo: Nile Hawyer/Nile Scott Shots)

In the end, what does Fun Home have to say to us? Find out now, through June 30th. For, as Small Alison puts it best, remembering the airplane game, at the end of the show: “Caption: every so often there was a rare moment of perfect balance when I soared above him.”