Last night, we went to see Fun Home at the Public Theater. I, as well as everyone else, was initially skeptical, given that the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel was turned into a musical. How could Fun Home, a novel with a somber and depressing tone possibly be turned into a jolly, cheerful musical? After watching the play, I realized that not only did the producers of the musical find the perfect balance between the two, but also created a new rendition of the story that touched all of our hearts just like Bechdel’s graphic novel.
The play opened up with a woman in the background standing by a desk, presumably writing or drawing. In the foreground, “Small Alison” starts singing onstage, asking “Daddy” to play airplane. This first scene without a doubt mirrors the first scene in the graphic novel, when Alison and Bruce played airplane. We realize that the woman in the background is Alison when she grew older. She is in the process of writing her graphic novel, the same novel for which this play is based off of. All throughout the play, older Alison remains, observing the scenes and trying to craft her novel every time she said “Caption.” In the play, we are able to see Alison when she was younger, from when she would ask her Daddy to play airplane, to when she would make advertisements for the Bechdel Fun Home with her brothers, to seeing her father sneak out, etc. We see Alison in her college years, where she has this adorable awkwardness about her when she is in the process of finding herself and when she forms a relationship with Joan, who seems absolutely perfect for Alison. We see Alison during childhood and in her adolescent/young adult years. And of course, we see Bruce, who seems to put on a good image that he has the perfect family. However, we see that behind closed doors, Bruce is actually having affairs with other men behind his wife’s back and through older Alison’s reflection. We are able to see all of the hints Bruce dropped that Alison failed to pick up on until her mom broke the news to her when she was away at college. Older Alison is remembering all of this so that she can incorporate it into her autobiography.
However, what I truly liked about the play was that Older Alison did not always play the part of the mundane narrator who did not take part of the action in the play. We see that towards the end, Older Alison is trying to figure out why her father never confessed to her that he was gay. She is still baffled by the fact that he suddenly died, or possibly killed herself. Perhaps the most powerful scene was when Older Alison was in the car with her father and she sings the song about “telephone poles and black wires.” She is waiting for her father to confess about what she already knows. We see that these questions still haunt her to this day, which, personally to me, was not as clear in the novel. The play was able to take the story from Bechdel’s graphic novel and present it in a new light. Personally, it was a different rendition from the novel, a rendition that I completely enjoyed. My only criticism was that I felt that the play was a little too positive, especially given the tone of the graphic novel. But the play, nonetheless, was amazing and could, hopefully, find its way to Broadway.
