FUN HOME — Page 2

"Will this show stand the test of time????"

Will this show stand the test of the tourists?

Where are the best seats for this show? I got seats in the 100s so I'm hoping they're good.

"Also, I think they are tapping into the LGBT community who may not regularly attend theatre."

Well they're no friends of mine. (Actually, I've talked it up to just that cohort since the middle of the Public run).

She's been so forthcoming with here thoughts about the entire broadway process, I hope she is interviewed soon.

I cried when it won Best Musical. It's already such an American classic to me (don't jump on me for stating this).

Updated On: 6/9/15 at 08:48 PM

"but does anyone else hear a musical resemblance to William Finn's FALSETTOS?"

I hated "Falsettos" so… much, it, it… the feel, it … flames, flames -- FLAMES -- on the side of my face… breathing, breathle.. heaving breath.

thank you GalvestonPS...i agree with you on the "influence"...which is not a bad thing...i absolutely love FALSETTOS...

I don't hear FALSETTOS at all. Yet at odd moments a whiff -- only a small one -- of NEXT TO NORMAL. (Even the end of "Ring of Keys" echoes "I'm Alive" -- don't scream everyone, just a tad; listen.) But in tone, storytelling and character, it's like nothing that has come before. And the show's steadfast refusal to neither demonize nor romanticize Bruce's plight* is everything that FALSETTOS, frankly is not. Sentimentality never clouds Allison's journey, though it is deeply emotional every treacherous step of the way.

*(SPOILER ALERT: Listen to the scene around "Telephone Wire." Stunning, his inarticulate and shut-down responses to his daughter when he tries to broach the possibility of the two of them walking into a gay bar together. The moment is breathtaking for what's explored entirely between the lines. And heartbreaking, the present day Allison's wish to fix a lost experience that can't be righted after the fact.)

"This seems as good a place as any to ask this question:
Has any Best Musical Tony winner ever played in as small a theater as Fun Home? I thought Avenue Q might have had it beat, but a look at the grosses suggests that the Circle in the Square (at least as currently configured) has fewer seats than the John Golden. I'm hoping one of the distinguished theater historians on this site might be able to answer this question one way or the other!"

According to the Broadway League's website, the only theaters with less seats than Circle in the Square are the American Airlines, Booth, Samuel J. Friedman, Golden, and Helen Hayes. If we don't count the Golden (since the Fun Home configuration, as you mentioned, must have reduced the seating capacity to below that of the Golden), I can't think off the top of my head of any Best Musical winners that premiered at those theaters.

Augie, compare "Welcome to Our House on Maple Avenue" to "Making a Home" from MARCH OF THE FALSETTOS. As I said above, it's just an influence, not a rip-off; but the similarities are there.

To repeat, this in no way detracts from the achievement of FUN HOME. Richard Rodgers admitted he would often imagine what Jerome Kern would do; to my knowledge, nobody ever accused Rodgers of merely imitating Kern.

Why the hatred for the FALSETTO plays? (I prefer them individually rather than as a set in FALSETTOS.)

What's wrong with a little honest sentiment?

I think one of the work's very few shortcomings is that Brucs, while not romanticized, is a more sympathetic and less threatening character than in the novel. His liking younger men is treated as only slightly remarkable and dramatized with what appears to be a graduated student, while the novel makes it clear that he tends to go for teenagers.

The narrative brilliance was that he never became a sex criminal stereotype- he was a tragic character but a dangerous, sinister one. Little of Bruce's threat seeps through to the musical.

There's a wonderful 20 minute piece of video, which I must dig up, when Tesori and Kron discuss how long it took them to find a way into Bruce that didn't present him as detestable and inaccessible. Knowing the show would be unwatchable if it eschewed a basic level of understanding. They knew this was a story about Alison making peace with many oppositional aspects of her conflicted father, and had to create a man that could sing in a piece of musical theater that was neither a winning hero nor the traditional villain. He did inspire his daughter, if obliquely, and help her nurture her talent. So they landed on a shorthand, to show him wrestling with his rigid, aesthetic-centric (and narcissistic) demands on the home while sneaking men in (and his wife, late in the show, sings truthfully that they were often boys; no one sidesteps that). I don't think the show in any way whitewashes Bruce.

But who would want it to be a moralizing hatched job? Art (the best sort) illuminates motive and behavior beyond judgement. Kron's adaptation is also filled with compassion, even as it shows the negative impact his deceptive (and boundary ignoring) behavior had on everyone. Do remember: Alison's mother is buried next to her husband. She chose that. This is a story filled with a pragmatic dry-eyed sense of redemption. Alison examines her father, and then releases him, damaged as he was, in the play's final moments. So she can move on. In interviews, Alison talks about unexpected "grace" coming from the musical's trajectory. She approves of how the story resolves. The authors did an extraordinary job in maintaining the overall truth but finding access to a tortured man's crises without demonizing him.

""but does anyone else hear a musical resemblance to William Finn's FALSETTOS?"
I hated "Falsettos" so… much, it, it… the feel, it … flames, flames -- FLAMES -- on the side of my face… breathing, breathle.. heaving breath."

NAMO I love clue! I hope that they make a musical of it! It would be incredible.