Fun Home Previews- Page 16

[indytallguy]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 9:27am

"Just because adult Allison knows the end of the story at the top of the evening doesn't mean we the audience should. I'd have much preferred to be in the dark."

It would be a very different show if this was not revealed at the beginning, one not true to the source material as others have noted. And yes, many shows deviate from their source, but this would be a dramatic change. Since the story is Allison's journey of self-examination, I much prefer knowing it from the onset. For some it may well be a better one for the reasons you've identified why you would prefer not to know.

And as for After Eight's comments about the show being a masterpiece and finding an audience, all I will say is that to me, Fun Home is a well-staged show that tells a challenging story in an honest and emotional way and features a uniformly excellent cast singing some truly beautiful music.

Is that a masterpiece? Hell if I know or care. What it was for me was a very enjoyable night that resonated with me as only good theatre can. Fun Home has left me with compelling stage pictures I recall regularly, authentic moments I am still reflecting on, and some gorgeous music and lyrics I will not forget ... just as some of the musicals After Eight champions have done for me as well.

No doubt the show may have deeper connections for those of us who are gay. But I think the show ultimately will appeal to anyone who ever thinks about themselves, their family, and their upbringing and wonders "how do we/it end up like this?" ... so long as they don't dismiss Fun Home out of hand because it is about someone who draws comics (ick) who happens to be a lesbian (oh my). :)



Updated On: 4/11/15 at 09:27 AM

[South Florida]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 10:44am

Sadly, I think Whizzer nailed it, I've got family meeting in NYC for a once in a lifetime get together, I've got my tickets for FH, had them for a while, it seems most of my very "Christian" family will be going to something else.  I hate to think what that implies but they do range in age from 60-70.  We're growing up, most of the haters will be dead soon.

 

[delongpre]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 1:18pm

Finding out about Bruce's suicide at the beginning is not a spoiler. The show is not about what happens to Dad.

We are going along with Alison as she searches her memories (and drawings) for clues as to WHY things happened the way they did. She had chronicled her life incredibly well which allows us all to share the details of a small, medium and large Alison's experiences. Why is she taking this journey? Apparently she wants some answers as she matures. Lots of us do this throughout our lives. I only wish I had kept track of my life as well as Bechdel has of hers.

[South Florida]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 6:02pm

The only thing that I have a beef with is that the lyrics in the show suggest with certainty that Bruce committed suicide.  The novel left that in doubt and I can't help thinking that anyone jumping in front of a truck dosen't do it backwards, which is what the truck driver said. Does it matter, probably in the end no, if Bruce dosen't jump out in front of that truck there is no show.  I have mentioned this somewhere before but I witnessed a jump in front of the truck suicide, the backing up testimony leaves me leaning toward saw a snake, despite all the problems he's going through at the time this would be my inclination to believe.  If I could ask AB one question it would be about that.

[steven22]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 6:12pm

Does anyone know if any understudies have gone on yet? I'm guessing we would have heard on here if someone was out. 

 

Can't wait to see the show again after it opens in a few weeks! 

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 6:24pm

South Florida, I got to the impression that in the book she *basically* decided it was a suicide too.  However, it was more vague, and my view may be covered from when I did a paper involving it five or so years back and went thru a ton of Bechdel interviews where she seemed to say that since the book came out she had decided that it was for certain (maybe that is why it's more clear in the musical.)

And thanks Whizzer and Someone in a Tree for the nice words in the pointless After8 argument.  I'll try to resist a reply other than to say, After8--I gave you specific examples of adventurous shows that didn't work for me--since you asked--and you ignored that.  You have yet to answer any of your own questions or mine--you asked for a considerate discussion in your post (though I doubt anyone bought the sincerity of that) and that's what I initially offered you.  Repeating the same thing, particularly with increasingly pejorative language, is not a participating in a discussion.  Oh well.

Updated On: 4/11/15 at 06:24 PM

[South Florida]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 6:26pm

I gave away the book, those of you that have it, please look at the drawings, it looks like Alison is saying he was hauling yard waste across the street right before it happened.  The lyrics in the show make it sound like he jumped in front of the truck.  By the show starting out that he definitely killed himself is a bit disingenuous.

 

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 6:39pm

Pulled out the book.  It's at the start of chapter 2 (about 25 pages in)  The picture of him hauling stuff and not watching the road accompanies a caption "Maybe he was just [...]"  The next panel says "but these are just quibbles I don't believe it was an accident."

In the previous chapter she already says repeatedly that he killed himself.  That's the only time she really offers any doubt and I think the illustration is just meant to show what some say happened--obviously not what DID happen or what she felt.  In the end (comparing it to Leopold Bloom's father in Ullyses--a reference I don't miss in the musical lol) she says "But he did hurtle himself into the sea of course" (and there's a panel of a truck coming towards the reader.)

[ebontoyan]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 6:41pm

"Sadly, I think Whizzer nailed it, I've got family meeting in NYC for a once in a lifetime get together, I've got my tickets for FH, had them for a while, it seems most of my very "Christian" family will be going to something else.  I hate to think what that implies but they do range in age from 60-70.  We're growing up, most of the haters will be .dead soon.
 "

 Not only the 60-70 years old folks but this show will not sell to people from Middle America.  Just sayin and don't dump on me since many of u who disagrees with this thread tends to do that.

I will also add the international tourists will not be flocking to this show

Updated On: 4/11/15 at 06:41 PM

[South Florida]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 6:47pm

Am I dreaming this or was there another incident in the book where he cowered from a snake, did the truck driver say he backed into it, or did I imagine that?  Thanks Eric.

 

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 6:53pm

Ugh I am tired of flipping through this book :P  But yes that is a panel--I can't find it but I remember it vividly.  I'm pretty sure again it's an image conveyed by a suggestion made as to what might have happened.  Still, the point is, in Alison's mind--from chapter one--he killed himself.  So I don't think it changes the book by having her character say that (does another character ever say it?  I obviously only know the CD)

Some 60-70 year olds don't mind gay stuff :P  I remember when I was a young teen and I saw the Spider Woman tour with my grandma, I obviously wasn't out but I was a bit nervous about the subject matter (she was just extremely excited to see Chita.)  She was more than fine with it--  (Granted, I am not sure my grandfather would have been but...)  Still, I think Whizzer's point is valid, and I have to wonder (or not) why A8 has simply refused to address that the show maybe won't catch on because of homophobic attitudes?  He probably sees that as an excuse with no basis in reality...

[South Florida]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 8:33pm

EM and AE you guys need to have a cease fire, you're both smart people that make me go for the thesaurus, bet ya could have a few cocktails together before a show.

 

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 8:39pm

I made an attempt at one long ago... 

[South Florida]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 8:53pm

Cool

[indytallguy]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 9:53pm

"Not only the 60-70 years old folks but this show will not sell to people from Middle America.  Just sayin and don't dump on me since many of u who disagrees with this thread tends to do that.

I will also add the international tourists will not be flocking to this show

"

I am a person from Middle America and have seen the show five times, three downtown and twice on Broadway. Middle America is a generic term that implies some monolithic mindset that simply doesn't exist in the manner that you seem to suggest.

Will it play big in Peoria ... to use another trite comparison? Probably not, but will it play to some people in Peoria? Most likely.





Updated On: 4/11/15 at 09:53 PM

[After Eight]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 10:29pm

"and I have to wonder (or not) why A8 has simply refused to address that the show maybe won't catch on because of homophobic attitudes? He probably sees that as an excuse with no basis in reality..."

 

Exactly.

Cf. La Cage aux Folles, Gemini, Angels in America, The Normal Heart, Torch Song Trilogy, The Killing of Sister George, The Boys in the Band...

[ebontoyan]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 10:41pm

""Not only the 60-70 years old folks but this show will not sell to people from Middle America.  Just sayin and don't dump on me since many of u who disagrees with this thread tends to do that.
I will also add the international tourists will not be flocking to this show"

I am a person from Middle America and have seen the show five times, three downtown and twice on Broadway. Middle America is a generic term that implies some monolithic mindset that simply doesn't exist in the manner that you seem to suggest.

Will it play big in Peoria ... to use another trite comparison? Probably not, but will it play to some people in Peoria? Most likely.

Response:  That was my point, indytallguy, just not articulated as well as you did.  You are more open minded than most.  In my Midwest performing arts center, a lot of people left during the intermission of a Spring Awakening touring production. And  I loved that show! Just drawing parallels, and this show has a way more difficult subject matter than SA





"

 

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 4/12/15 at 12:11am

A8 only one of those was a musical, and it was about as safe a musical about a gay couple as you could have if you want to appeal to a broad audience...  (Although Kiss of the Spider Woman fits there, but it did infamously have trouble selling tickets to some of its planned tour dates.)  The Normal Heart had limited runs for both major New York productions...  Etc.  Once again you ignored my questions.  Well played.

[Robbie2]

Posted: 4/12/15 at 1:54am

Saw it tonight Saturday from Row D 220 side seating (fantastic), I feel the sides warrant the best views for this show just like being at a tennis match but one never misses out as it has been expertly staged for all to enjoy and not miss a beat from any seat.

Btw, Jason Robert Brown was sitting in front of me.

Anyway, is the show a masterpiece? No, but it is one of the best musicals I've seen in many years. Powerfully moving, heartbreaking and uplifting by a superb cast.

Kudos to Sam Gold for his masterful direction...he has the difficult task of staging this in the round but he does it solidly, creatively and seamlessly!

All 3 Alisons deserve to be Tony nominated for their performances as they are all perfection...Emily Skeggs and her song "Changing My Major" is funny and heartwarming, Sydney Lucas and her awakening "Ring of Keys" is quite the highlight but Beth Malone as older Alison acts as a framing-device sort of narrator for the show and she really shines! Her song "Telephone Wire" centrally staged on the revolve is especially effective with Dad (Michael Cerveris).

Cerveris is compelling. Long-suffering Mom (Judy Kuhn) is magnificent. Her powerfully poignant "Days and Days" is emotionally raw.

This is Jeanine Tesori's best score and she has written some beautiful soaring ballads along with a smart book&lyrics by Lisa Kron.

I was happy to see such a diverse, attentive audience that did not talk, cough, sneeze, eat, drink, look at phones-txt and or fidget...everyone behaved but I did see many snoozers. 

Don't MISS IT!

I predict many TONY nominations (11?) and WINS (Musical +++others)!

Nominations:

Best Musical

Best Direction Musical

Best Score

Best Book & Lyrics

Best Orchestrations

Best Actor Musical-Cerveris

Best Actress Musical-Malone

Best Featured Actress Musical-Kuhn, Lucas, Skeggs

Best Lighting

 

 

 

Updated On: 4/12/15 at 01:54 AM

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 4/12/15 at 2:14am

Great review.

 

I didn't realize they already have a tie-in edition of the graphic memoir. 

[Robbie2]

Posted: 4/12/15 at 2:15am

Eric Montreal,

I now need to read the novel after tonight's experience!

[After Eight]

Posted: 4/12/15 at 6:33am

"only one of those was a musical, "

Which means what, exactly? That homophobes only restrict their homophobia to musicals?

"and it was about as safe a musical about a gay couple as you could have if you want to appeal to a broad audience..."

Nonsense. It was considered quite a risky venture at the time it opened. The problem --- for people like you, at least --- is that it sought to appeal to an audience, instead of spitting in its face. And it did appeal to them, by providing a good book and score, warmth and humanity, and excellent entertainment. Something the "brave" and "adventurous" musicals we are told we all must bow and scrape before fail, and actually willfully refuse to do.

"The Normal Heart had limited runs for both major New York productions... Etc."

 It had three.

"Etc."

Ha Ha Ha. I love how you dismiss three shows that ran over a thousand performances with "etc." 

"Once again you ignored my questions."

I asked you one simple question, that you failed to answer. Did you see this show?

If you didn't, you shouldn't be carrying on as the world's foremost authority on the subject.

Nor on any other show you haven't seen. Or have seen, for that matter.

 

 

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 4/12/15 at 7:27am

The plays don't count because unless there's a big star in the cast only the more adventurous theatergoer will attend a play. The Tony for Best Play also has much less effect on the box office/sway with tourists than a Beat Musical Tony. 

La Cage, while not without its charms, presents the least "threatening" image of gay men possible. Gay men are all (save one) flamboyant, sexless and more interested in putting on a dress than sucking a Cock. 

What is so real and new about Fun Home is that the heroine is so "normal." She has the exact same desires as any straight woman in musical theater. If she were straight and sang Changing My Major To John instead of Joan it would go down a lot more easily with a certain set. The daring is partly in Alison's average nature. 

Straight audiences have always been able to laugh at the gay minstrel in tv and film- ever notice how sexless Jack on Will & Grace was? Cam & Mitch are by far the least sexual of the three Pritchett clans? How Carrie & friends would love to have "their gays" around for shopping and gossip? These are the roles made comfortable for gay men. They go down easy. The lesbian (and not to even mention the gay man) in Fun Home are completely outside any mold people are used to seeing. Thank god for it too. 

 

 

[weaselprince71]

Posted: 4/12/15 at 9:27am

Eric and SF: yes, the graphic memoir is more careful to allow that Bruce's death might indeed have been an accident, as officially reported -- though even in the book, Bechdel makes it clear that she and her mother always thought otherwise.  (In short interviews, she sometimes simply refers to her father as having "killed himself," without further explanation). 

I agree that the book is somewhat more ambiguous than the show, and that that ambiguity is a good thing and even a necessary one, as it speaks -- in the most dramatic imaginable context -- to the impossibility of ever really knowing another person's motivations, which is ultimately one of the book's bigger themes: words, pictures, a painstakingly-assembled documentary record and a searching intelligence as exquisitely sensitive as Alison Bechdel's STILL aren't enough to allow her (or us) access to her father's mind. 

But I think her adaptors have done a creditable job in preserving this ambiguity as far as possible.  Alison's line "Was it because of me?  I'm afraid it ...wasn't.  That's the crazy thing, Dad, I'm afraid it wasn't!" (or, on Broadway, the simpler and less bad-laugh-courting "Was it because of me, or did it have nothing to do with me??") could be thought to question not only Bruce's motivation but also his agency in the matter of his own death.  And most importantly, "Edges of the World" leaves him in front of the oncoming truck asking "Oh my god, why am I standing here??" in stunned incomprehension.  If the book scrupulously illustrated his death as perhaps the most overdetermined "accident" imaginable, the show conversely suggests a largely unpremeditated and nearly-inadvertent "suicide," occasioned by a moment of tortured self-absorption but not necessarily by any explicit will to die. 

Can a lazy audience still read "Edges" as a straightforward "suicide aria" à la Javert -- a moment of introspection so agonizing and engulfing that, by the final verse, the singer comes to see self-annihilation as his only escape? (Complete with powerfully-ironic reprise of his opposite-number's earlier, benign epiphany: in this case, Medium Alison's "am I falling into nothingness, or flying into something so sublime...?").  Sure, but comparing FUN HOME with LES MISÉRABLES doesn't really give Kron and Tesori their full due.  When I saw FH at the Public I was a little too ready to go there myself, viewing "Edges" as unwisely overdramatic and a bit formulaic.  But I've since come to appreciate the song more on its own merits.  And as restaged by Gold at Circle in the Square, it's a quietly stunning one, with Cerveris no longer floating in a claustrophobically-black void singing straight out into a white-hot spotlight (as was the somewhat dully pro-forma case downtown), but instead negotiating a shadowy minefield of which, to our stealthily-increasing alarm, he seems barely even peripherally aware.

Updated On: 5/17/15 at 09:27 AM

[South Florida]

Posted: 4/12/15 at 9:40am

Thanks for all the help, can't wait.  Had a funny moment the other day, I was reading the lyrics and I have listened at least 20+ times, I always thought young Alison was saying "Tammy Endicott wore a dress, Endicott was so humiliated".