Scenes depict a family shaped by tremendous pressure from demanding and barely-closeted patriarch, Bruce (Enrique Bravo), in one timeline; the awkwardness and euphoria of Bechdel’s first same-sex relationship with college girlfriend, Joan (Cate Ross), in another; and reckoning with the death by suicide of Bruce in the latest timeline. Despite the heavy subject matter, it’s also a lively musical punctuated by big laughs.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Most theater-goers probably won’t have experience growing up in small-town Pennsylvania while helping to run the family’s funeral home under intense scrutiny from a father, whose denial of his authentic sexual orientation leads to intense outbursts of externalized self-loathing and frustration as well as a series of affairs.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
But most people have probably wondered how extensively the clay of their lives was shaped by the adults of their childhood while looking for an end to the large fingerprints’ swirls. Many will have seen a loved one harm another loved one — intentionally or incidentally — either physically or emotionally, be able to recall the thrill and uncertainty of young love or remember the first time they fully became aware of death.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
The finer points are totally singular to Bechdel and her family, but the broader strokes some of the most-universal emotions out there, and the cast of “Fun Home” do an excellent job of making the emotions resonate.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
There’s no weak link in the ensemble, and some of the musical’s least-seasoned cast members — children McFarlin, Kyra Wood and Axel Boily — steal the show when given opportunities.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“Come to the Fun Home,” a pastiche of The Jackson 5-era pop, lets the young actors go big, silly and theatrical with their performances that inspired grins under the masks of the Saturday night audience.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
The show’s musicians — Gary Busby, Rob Cohen, Paul Cotton, Franz Felkl, Liz Hanley, Dale McFarlin and Ty Wolverton — do great work throughout “Fun Home,” but that song might be their best moment, too. It just wouldn’t work if it didn’t sound like a dead-ringer for early ’70s radio hits complete with swirling strings.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
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