A provocative Universe
Fun Home, SpeakEasy Stage Company, Roberts Theatre, Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts, through November 24.617-933-8600 or bostontheatrescene.com
Universe Rushing Apart:Blue Kettle & Here We Go, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Sorenson Center, Black Box Theatre ,Wellesley, through November 18. Commshakes.org
In her acclaimed 2006 graphic memoir "Fun Home," Alison Bechdel struggled to understand her closeted father Bruce, his ongoing emotional conflict and his eventual suicide. The Beech Creek, Pennsylvania lesbian writer grappled with reliving painful experiences from her childhood, college years at Oberlin and full adulthood and reaching insight about them.
The Broadway musical adaptation of the same name (Off-Broadway ,2013)poignantly hit a nerve with theatergoers from all sexualities, won the 2015 best musical Tony and took home Tonys for lesbian book author-lyricist Lisa Kron and composer Jeanine Tesori among its well-deserved five prizes. Now SpeakEasy Stage Company, in residence at the Calderwood Pavilion, is forcefully presenting "Fun Home"'s strong messages about maturing and understanding in the area's premiere local professional production of the show at the Boston Center for the Arts' Roberts Theatre.
As in the Broadway production at Circle in the Square Theatre, company artistic director Paul Daigneault is staging the SpeakEasy with an audience-involving configuration—here a thrust stage with theatergoers on virtually all sides at the Roberts for an intimate effect. That intimacy provides a perfect fit for Alison's memory narrative.
What remarkably sets that narrative and "Fun Home" apart is the musical's trio of Alisons—namely eight year old Small Alison, 18-19 year old college student Medium Alison and the 43 year old much wiser adult simply identified as Alison. Throughout Alison's memory odyssey, she moves around the sprawling set design—vividly detailed by Cristina Todesco— that represents the Bechdel's Pennsylvania home as well as Bruce's funeral home—referred to by the Bechdel children as Fun Home—and Medium Alison's Oberlin dorm room.
Frequently an observer as well as a family member, Alison analyzes her respective experiences as Small Alison and Medium Alison to gain insight about her formative years and full realization of her sexual orientation. The adult daughter—in Kron's smart book and Bechdel's memoir—unflinchingly deals with her mother's angst and awareness of her husband's sexual orientation as well as her father's disturbing attraction to young men, even among his high school students.
Kron's inspired book has humor sometimes making its way into even serious passages. Perhaps the most amusing stretch is Small Alison and her brothers' lively collaboration on an inventive 'commercial' in a standout number entitled "Come to the Fun Home."
Director Daigneault first-rate cast captures the musical's singular blend of caring and candor. Amy Jo Jackson has all of Alison's gradual awakening about herself and about her father and their respective sexualities. Todd Yard sings vibrantly as Bruce—particularly on the striking solo "Edges of the World"—and does well demonstrating his early affection for Small Alison though he could do with more of the vulnerability Michael Cerveris evoked in his riveting Tony Award performance. Laura Marie Duncan finds mother Helen's pain and heartache—especially on the impassioned solo "Days and Days."
Marissa Simeqi finds Small Alison's spirit and wonder as Small Alison—especially on her telling solo "Ring of Keys." Ellie van Amerongen catches Medium Alison's naiveté as a college newcomer and feeling for fellow student Joan—played with fitting warmth by Desire Graham—in the clever solo "Changing My Major." Frequent SpeakEasy music director Matthew Stern conducts with great heart. Designer Karen Perlow brings nuance to Alison's striking perceptions.
Alison Bechdel takes emotional and sexual fact-finding to a new musical plateau. Audience members will likewise find much to explore in SpeakEasy's curiously comforting "Fun Home."
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If you have seen Caryl Churchill's 2002 identity-questioning drama "A Number," you will probably find the prolific London dramatist's 1997 "Blue Kettle" and 2015 "Here We Go" your theatrical cup of tea. The former one-act play has 40 year old mystery man Derek looking to con diverse women into believing him to be their biological son adopted at birth, while the latter brings up the post-funeral memories of five distinctive women about a man known in different ways to all of them. Commonwealth Shakespeare Company has brewed up a very flavorful twosome in the intimate Black Box Theatre of Babson Arts' Sorenson Center.
Director Bryn Boice—who brought real fire to Actors' Shakespeare Company all-women gender-bending staging of "Julius Caesar"— is tautly directing these 45-minute efforts. She has called the former a "puzzle for the brain" and the latter a "puzzle for the soul"—a distinction vividly clear in Churchill's language and the crisp performances of her five-performer ensemble. Look for word play with the title of the first play—for example a Dutch painter identified as Van Blue.
Ryan Winkles has all of Derek's elusiveness with potential mothers as well as his girlfriend Enid, played with sharp attitude by Sarah Mass. He also stands out in shoeless wheel-chair seated Man's highly poetic second play monologue—one that may call to mind Samuel Beckett as it evokes images of mortality as well as speculation about Hell and Purgatory. Siobhan Carroll, Maureen Keiller and Karen MacDonald do well as a variety of females in the first play, and all three join Mass and Winkles no less as the women in the second. Siobhan Carroll as a caretaker undresses and dresses Man—quietly suffering save for an ache-filled moan as he is lifted for the hauntingly repetitive process.
Cristina Todesco's elegantly spare set—including white cubes combining to form such pieces as seats and a couch for Derek and Enid—properly matches Churchill's tight dialogue. Jen Rock's lighting enhances the surreal nature of the scenarios.
Identity and especially death are always uncomfortable and provocative issues. Churchill makes them theatrically challenging, and Boice and company make CSC's double bill both arresting and ultimately haunting.