Prior to sitting down and watching the musical, I had wondered to myself, ‘How on Earth is it possible to make a tragicomic like Fun Home into a musical?’ I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised by the end of the musical. Though I did wish some parts were more accurately depicted in terms of comparing the musical with the tragicomic, I felt that it was a great musical. Being that it was my first musical, I wasn’t actually too sure what to expect from it. The only thing I had in mind was how the novel would translate when made into a musical where the novel would become heavily condensed by the time constraints of the musical.

I feel that Fun Home was a hard piece of literature to work with when trying to make it into a musical. This is because Fun Home is a graphic novel. The reader knows exactly how each specific aspect of the novel should look and feel. We are given images, which display the character’s emotions, actions, and motives. It is not really up to the reader to decipher what the author had intended for us to understand. Thus, we have no choice but to complain when things are done differently during the musical. The director of the musical has to plan out how each character would be best represented in the context of a musical, not a novel.

Thus, despite certain disparities between the novel and the musical, I found the musical to be a great success. In the musical’s context, the character Alison was THE central figure. Everyone else played a side role where they would lead to the growth and development of Alison. However, the novel emphasizes Bruce and a number of other characters in great detail. Bruce is made out to be a much worse father in the novel than in the musical, but that is understandable. I felt that in order to keep everyone focused on Alison and her coming out, it was necessary to change the characters up to a certain extent.

Overall, I found the musical to be a very good one by being able to maintain the central theme of the novel, while having its own flavor. The excellent music was also a plus.