Fun Home

December 7, 2021 7:39 PM

A lesbian coming-out story, a father's suicide, life in a funeral home... Perhaps not the most likely subjects for a Broadway musical, but in 2015, the truly transcendent play Fun Home opened, and broke all expectations. Written by Tony-winnters Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron, based on a graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel [author reading and Q&A, 51m], the show is touching, hilarious, tragic, and ultimately very very human. Here is an edited audience bootleg (several sources, really good) of the original Broadway Cast [Vimeo link, 1h41m], including Michael Cerveris, Judy Kuhn, and Beth Malone.

A bit more material about the show: Tesori, Kron, and Bechdel on Theater Talk [26m] The "Three Alisons" on BUILD [30m] Tesori, Kron, and Bechdel on Democracy Now [48m].

posted by hippybear (35 comments total)

Fun Home (the musical) is the post that convinced me to see the original production back in 2013.
posted by roger ackroyd at 8:08 PM on December 7, 2021

I saw this play the day after I saw Hamilton with its OBC, and that was an absolutely thrilling experience, but Fun Home was the show that made me weep. It's hard to imagine two more different musicals to see back to back, but the cumulative effect made me fall fully back in love with musical theater. It's such a singular and beautiful show, and so hard to explain why it works so well.

I think it may have been one of the things that subtly worked its way inside my psyche and made me realize I was queer.

If you don't want to watch the whole bootleg, then just watch "Ring of Keys."

Jake Gyllenhaal is going to produce and star in a movie adaptation. Movie adaptations of musicals are always cause for worry, since they are almost never good these days. And I'm nervous about a straight person producing and starring. BUT he was apparently great in Sunday in the Park With George, and apparently Tesori produced that show, so she must trust him. Fingers crossed, I guess! I do think the show has a certain intimacy that sets it apart from many musicals and might help it do better on screen.
posted by lunasol at 8:12 PM on December 7, 2021 [8 favorites]

It's a great musical. I feel so lucky that my friend took me to see it.
posted by jb at 8:12 PM on December 7, 2021

Oh, this was a great and infuriating post about how they marketed the show, especially in terms of "straight-washing" it.
posted by lunasol at 8:15 PM on December 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

I think my favourite song is the one about changing her major (to study her girlfriend).
posted by jb at 8:21 PM on December 7, 2021 [3 favorites]

After the show hit Broadway, Alison Bechdel drew a piece about the experience of watching her work and life turned into a musical, and how she was unprepared for what it would feel like, or mean.
posted by tzikeh at 8:24 PM on December 7, 2021 [27 favorites]

Oh gosh tzikeh that just made me tear up, thank you for that link. I am farklemt.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:35 PM on December 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

As a Broadway worker, I know people illegally record bootlegs, but seeing them linked on metafilter really fucking sucks.
posted by mollymayhem at 12:46 AM on December 8, 2021 [13 favorites]

I am an aImost exact contemporary of BechdeI's, and both Ring of Keys and the scene where she nerves herseIf up to go to the campus gay group were very famiIiar.

I saw a production in Toronto with friends a coupIe of years ago, and am very gIad I had the opportunity to see it Iive. I'm a bit worried to hear about the movie idea.

I teII this story every time AIison BechdeI comes up, but aImost 30 years ago, she was touring with a sIide show about the deveIopment of her art, and she brought it to the IocaI university as part of pride month programming in the middIe of the spring semester. I was 27 at the time, identified as a Iesbian, and had something of a regionaI reputation as a storyteIIer at Iesbian coffeehouses and festivaIs and what not. I was booked to perform at a cabaret that was part of the pride programming as weII.

My girIfriend at the time was the feminist phiIosopher MariIyn Frye, who was a women's studies prof at Michigan State, and it was MariIyn's job to squire BechdeI around whiIe she was on campus. So I ended up at a tabIe with MariIyn, AIison BechdeI, and a coupIe of MariIyn's grad students during the cabaret.

My time to perform came, I went up and did my thing, which I was very good at. When I finished, I came back and sat down, and AIison BechdeI Ieaned across the tabIe to me and said, "That. Was. BriIIiant."

It was so weird and yet aIso very right when she got famous outside the Iesbian community. She is a unique taIent and deserves aII good things.
posted by Orlop at 2:53 AM on December 8, 2021 [19 favorites]

Not a Broadway worker, but cosigning mollymayhem's comment.
posted by Weftage at 5:49 AM on December 8, 2021 [3 favorites]

As a Broadway worker, I know people illegally record bootlegs, but seeing them linked on metafilter really fucking sucks.

If Broadway ever wants to shed the reputation for being elitist, they'll need to start making tapings available legally.

The notion that plays are only for those who can afford to see them (including travel and lodging in New York) or for those lucky enough that a show later (many years later) comes to their city is ridiculous.

5 years ago, everyone was obsessed with Hamilton. You had people who could recite the entirety of the musical, and they'd not seen the show once. It took 3 more years before it was made available to the masses, and even then, on a premium streaming service.

There's no reason that it shouldn't have been available to people sooner except for elitism. I get that folks on Broadway work hard, but also we're in a pandemic, so seeing a play (even if it were free) just isn't in the cards for folks. If producers won't make the show available to stream legally, bootlegs it is.
posted by explosion at 5:52 AM on December 8, 2021 [16 favorites]

I second explosion, as I was one of those Hamilton people. I will never be able to fly to the opposite coast to see a Broadway show. I go to Broadway touring ones. Fun Home has never played near me to my knowledge. Who knows if/when I could ever see it otherwise. Would happily pay to get a legal stream of shows if I could.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:40 AM on December 8, 2021

I don't watch bootlegs, but I do agree -- it's bad business not to film shows. Remember, Bill Watterson didn't want there to be any Calvin merchandise, so the market arranged for it anyway, and the result was far worse.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:47 AM on December 8, 2021 [3 favorites]

I have a theater-kid niece and nephew, and they get bootlegs from a source all the time. They also work their asses off to perform locally and go to touring companies whenever they can. It seems like bootlegs are filling an unmet need. I'm sure they'd be happy to pay for legit copies.

Anyway, I'd love to see Fun Home and I loved the graphic novel. Good stuff.
posted by emjaybee at 7:06 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

BUT he was apparently great in Sunday in the Park With George, and apparently Tesori produced that show, so she must trust him.

He was fine. Annaleigh Ashford was great, but Gyllenhall was uneven. The best part of his performance was his physicality and transformation in the dog number, but without the physical work (in other words, in most of the show) he was emotionally static.

Now I'm gonna have to go watch his bit as Mr. Music in John Mulaney & The Sack Lunch Bunch again.
posted by fedward at 7:32 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

I was a music performance major and I'm married to a professional theatre artist who's a proud member of Actor's Equity, and I'd like to third mollymayhem's comment. If people don't get paid fairly for their work; if copyright, performance rights, and distribution rights aren't respected, the work won't happen. There's a lot that could be better about the way distribution works, but bootlegging is not the answer.
posted by fedward at 7:37 AM on December 8, 2021 [6 favorites]

Surely at this point, this is more of a historical document about a famous production that won a lot of awards and is not taking money out of anyone's pockets. It isn't like this is currently running on Broadway or as a touring company. If anything, this is likely to inspire people to want to see this live or get involved with a production of their own.
posted by hippybear at 7:44 AM on December 8, 2021 [12 favorites]

I recently read The Secret to Superhuman Strength which is another autobiographical illustrated slice of Bechdel's life, through the lens of fitness, and ... i found it fairly tepid. Which is mostly just me, probably. I just yesterday put Now I Spill the Family Secrets, another autobiographical GN, down halfway through. Probably "graphic biography of a dysfunctional family" is a trope I should avoid.

I'm definitely in favour of boots, as an artist/actor/writer/director, but only when there's no legitimate method of distribution active. Even fansubs from groups that pull their recent-media subs when legit translations appear, that's cool by me. Give me a way to buy it; don't just sit on it like an IP-hoarding dragon. (Another reason to hate Disney.)
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:51 AM on December 8, 2021

Katherine Steele: Why We CAN'T Stream Every Broadway Show | *the Truth about Hamilton, Pro Shots, and Bootlegs*
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:11 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Fucking Ring of Keys. Impossible to watch without crying a little every damn time. So good.
posted by Lutoslawski at 8:47 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

I saw the touring production at the Ahmanson in LA at just the right moment in my life when every scene moved me immensely, but what stays in my mind years later is the brilliance and clarity of Ring of Keys. Just the most beautiful. blossoming moment. And on a more thematic level, for me what still echoes is the impossibility of truly knowing our parents. What a great show.
posted by BlahLaLa at 9:06 AM on December 8, 2021

If you don't want to watch the whole bootleg, then just watch "Ring of Keys."


I mean of course I had to, I'm powerless against it. So I'm about to go into a work meeting a little bit emotionally wrecked. Thanks.

On the streaming/bootlegging debate, one conversation my partner and I had a long time ago was about television performances. NBC recently staged a production of Annie live on TV, they've done this a bunch of times over the years with Grease, Sound of Music, etc. It would be REALLY COOL to see them do that with much more contemporary shows. My partner pointed out that Roger's and Hammerstein's Cinderella was actually written for and premiered on television in '57 (I'm certain this is common theater knowledge, _I_ didn't know it), and it would be really great to see more of that kind of thing happening now. I mean yes, it is neat to see theatrical performances on TV (insert a bunch of hemming and hawing over stunt casting etc), but it would be amazing to see the work of plays written in this century given that kind of platform. But like Kat Steele's video points out, the complicated web of rights and contracts and entities is A LOT and I get that.
posted by Maaik at 9:06 AM on December 8, 2021

I rarely go to theatre but was able to see this show in San Francisco. It was wonderful. I am so glad I saw it.
posted by Bella Donna at 9:18 AM on December 8, 2021

Annie Baker, I love you, you’re an actual genius playwright and a gift to the theater, but I will never not be mad that your play The Flick got the Pulitzer that should have gone to Lisa and Jeanine for Fun Home.
posted by minervous at 9:29 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Probably "graphic biography of a dysfunctional family" is a trope I should avoid.

I'm mostly familiar with Bechdel through Dykes To Watch Out For, which I read for years back when there were gay newspapers and magazines to be picked up. I'm not sure I'd enjoy her more autobiographical work.
posted by hippybear at 10:15 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

I caught the very end of the Broadway production, and it was amazing. I've since seen Fun Home a couple times locally - both very different stagings, and also well done.

Musical bootlegs were prized in the fan communities I was in, in my misspent youth. And much studied and discussed. To me it seems very normal that someone would share bootlegs as part of a deep dive into a musical.

I understand Broadway not condoning bootlegs, but they have uses and as someone who's come to numerous shows too late, I'm glad they exist.
posted by mersen at 10:43 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

For me the real issue with theater bootlegs is: can you imagine sitting near someone who had their phone up, recording the show the whole time? I’d be so annoyed.

I watched part of the bootleg video and it brought up the other issue with theater bootlegs, which is that theater is a three-dimensional art, and bootlegs filmed with iPhones can’t capture that. It’s especially noticeable here, because Fun Home was staged in the round (I think that’s the right term) and that kind of staging is just very hard to capture with any kind of camera, much less a few iPhones. The staging is so important in this show!
posted by lunasol at 10:44 AM on December 8, 2021 [2 favorites]

I'm not wild about bootlegs, but Broadway theater has an audience problem--white, older, relatively wealthy. People lament this, but the industry isn't doing much to provide cheaper and broader accessibility to build younger, more diverse audiences. Bootlegs fill a gap that the business won't. It's very complicated (rights, unions, contracts, etc), but fixing this problem simply isn't a priority for the people who could do it. Pirating art that is literally inaccessible any other way is not great, but understandable and unavoidable.
posted by Mavri at 11:37 AM on December 8, 2021 [4 favorites]

Thanks for posting! I've loved A. Bechdel's work for a long time, and it's great to see it grow into other forms. I, too, wish that accessibility to more folks were possible for these performances.
posted by winesong at 12:12 PM on December 8, 2021

Remember, Bill Watterson didn't want there to be any Calvin merchandise, so the market arranged for it anyway, and the result was far worse.

Don't forget Baby Yoda merchandise!
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:27 PM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

The graphic novel Fun Home is utterly terrific, in my opinion. It is so much more than what's in the musical. It's really hard to describe, a lot of autobiographies are "this happened and then that happened and this is what I think about that thing" and hers is so much more. There is a ton of introspection and extremely cerebral musing on the nature of human development as well as other stuff that is really difficult to capture in a marketable musical form.
posted by Anonymous at 12:39 PM on December 8, 2021

I've played Alison in several productions. It's an incredible show that I never tired of. That's not something I can say of most jobs.

It's also a uniquely challenging and lonely role. Not just is she onstage from lights up to lights down with no breaks, but she's alone out there. Lisa Kron's author's note in the published script states right up top that Alison is not a narrator, she's an artist actively trying to investigate her own memories of her family, her father Bruce, and herself. So she doesn't have a relationship with the audience, and she doesn't have any interaction with the other actors onstage, either.* She conjures them, she watches, she reacts, she questions, and she struggles, but she does it all from the outside.

The first time I did the show - which I had seen both in its original run at The Public and again on Broadway - I was completely shocked how few lines she actually has. Playing her, for me anyway, drew on my physical training more than I anticipated, as I had to put her thoughts into physical form far more than I got to speak them.

*Of course, there is the one moment. If you intend to see a production of the show at some point and want to remain unspoiled, feel free to stop reading here. Late in the show, as she draws closer and closer to remembering the events immediately before Bruce's death, Alison watches Middle Alison - her college self - have an honest conversation with her mother ("Days and Days) and then tentatively approach her father to try to do the same with him. He springs to his feet and invites her to take a drive. The actor playing Bruce doesn't ask Middle Alison, though, he turns his head and asks Alison. (Playing her, it is the first time anyone has made eye contact with me in almost 70 minutes. It raised the hairs on the back of my neck every single time.) So Alison steps into her own memory, and in that car ride with her father ("Telephone Wire") she is both 19 and 43, living that moment and remembering it, and despite everything she knows she begs herself and him to say something, anything, to connect, to change the past, to have one moment, as she sings to him, "where you tell me you see me." Of course he doesn't. Of course he can't. The car ride ends, he goes back into the house, Alison is again alone. It's shattering and beautiful.

I could talk about this show all day. It's dramaturgically so incredibly smart in its interweaving of themes across time, character, and incident. And yet it is the furthest thing from intellectual or cold. Sam Gold's direction of the original production was masterful, but productions I've seen (and been in) since have shown me that it's a resilient show, too. So if it's being produced near you, absolutely see it. (The publisher has a list of current and upcoming productions here.)

(And to weigh in on the bootleg issue from the stage: I loathe it. Seeing someone filming me from the house fills me with rage. The person is breaking the fundamental contract between the performers and the audience in the theater, that we are making a one-time event together, that this performance will only happen this particular way once, and that we are all doing it as a group with our bodies, our eyes and ears, and hearts. I have never had the chance to go full LuPone and stop a show or snatch a phone, but I absolutely would do it if I could. That said, I agree that my hide-bound and stubborn industry has done a terrible job of making shows accessible and that the ease of making digital bootlegs fills that void. But until we fix that - and we are trying! - you should absolutely refuse to support bootlegs on the grounds that they actively erode the theater-going experience for performers, fellow audience members, and ushers/front of house staff. Satisfy yourself with the cast recording, the libretto, and whatever else from your local public library like we all had to do before the internet.)
posted by A Sock in the Hand at 12:46 PM on December 8, 2021 [27 favorites]

Telephone Wire is why I go to the theater. I get chills thinking about it. I can't listen to that song in public, makes me cry every time. Thanks for the wonderful description.
posted by Mavri at 12:59 PM on December 8, 2021 [3 favorites]

Saw it in London, took my niece (who is from Brooklyn) and while pretty good all-round, there's something about these Broadway plays that just miss the target in London. Highly polished, outstanding youth casting, and a solid story, but something just doesn't connect.


(That's not to do with American writers or themes at all, I mean, in the last few years, The Inheritance by Matt Lopez was just stunning, I was both weeping with Vanessa Redgrave and hysterically laughing as the cast jumped all over me in the stalls. The Angels in America revival was amazing too. Lehman Trilogy was out of this world, bad luck to be on in the last year as The Inheritance.)
posted by bookbook at 4:47 PM on December 8, 2021

Seconding "Telephone Wire." Can't listen to it without crying.
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:59 AM on December 9, 2021