White sheets shroud the furniture at the opening of Vintage Theatre’s inspired production of “Fun Home”
This momentary emptiness evokes images of a summer house closed for the season and shadowy specters. A memory musical, “Fun Home” — book and lyrics by Lisa Kron, music by Jeanine Tesori and based on cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel — is both.
In the Tony-winning show, successful cartoonist Alison (Maya Ferrario) revisits her childhood home in Pennsylvania, taking us back to her freshman year at Oberlin College and grappling with a ghost — that of her father, Bruce.
Four months after Bechdel came out as lesbian in college, 43-year-old Bruce — a closeted gay man — stepped in front of a truck. Having embraced her sexuality decades earlier, how could Alison, now that same age, avoid tussling with the good, the sad and the ugly of her dad?
Directed by Emma Rebecca Maxfield, Vintage’s run has been extended to Feb. 25 — and for good reason. Not unlike the titular nickname the Bechdel family gave its mortuary business, the 90-minute show is amusing and at times dark. It is also powerfully humane.
In the opening number, “It All Comes Back,” Alison, played with a thoughtfulness both rueful and searching by Ferrario, looks on as Small Alison insists that her dad pay heed. “Daddy, hey Daddy, come here, OK? I need you. What are you doing? I said come here!” she sings. Then her sing-song demand soars into a sweet declaration: “I wanna play airplane/I wanna play airplane/I wanna play airplane.”
Just in case we miss the show’s telling tension — that of an adult child trying to figure out how she is and is not like her father, especially given their queerness — the opener is followed by “Sometimes My Father Appeared …,” in which the family sings the refrain “he wants” over and over as they prep their Pennsylvania house for a visit from a historic preservationist.
In addition to readying bodies for funerals and teaching English at the local high school, Bruce has taken pains to restore their home. He’s a stickler for details and often downright imperious with wife Helen (Adrienne Asterita) and children Alison, Christian (Aliyah Dickerson) and John (Henry Duffany).
The night of this review, Macaelle Vasquez imbued the youngest of the Alison characters with wise-child zest. (Adeleia Odekirk shares the role.) River Hetzel (who prefers nonbinary prounouns) brings touching tentativeness to their portrayal of Medium Alison, the Oberlin freshman who continues drawing in a style the rather snobbish Bruce is dismissive of, maintains a correspondence with him and is about to discover one of their truths.
When Medium Alison meets Joan (Elise Brianne Hood) outside a gay union meeting, they feign that they were headed elsewhere. Soon, they and Joan connect. Hilarious yet true to its earnestness, “Changing My Major” is arguably among the most winning songs ever written about first-time sex.
While Ferrario makes a trustworthy narrator and her younger selves endear, the show can’t work without Lars Preece’s balancing act. As the tormented but narcissistic dad, his is not a sympathetic character. Nor can he be monstrous, even though his flings and flirtations with younger (even underage) men seem infused with vanity and shame. How different his tryst with one of the wisest of his flings, Roy (Marlene Hall), is compared with Alison’s relationship with Joan. This is as much a comment on the generational shifts in the lives of LGBTQ+ people as it is about daughter and dad.
Of course, much of this was remarked upon when the show premiered on Broadway in 2015 and then had its national tour in 2017. It came to the Ellie Caulkins Opera House that year. What makes Vintage’s production glimmer is how this Broadway musical gains fresh poignancy in Vintage’s 67-seat Bond Trimble Theatre.
While the space always presents challenges to lighting (too shadowy this time out) and scenic design (it can be crammed), it also builds a special bond between audiences and performers.
In addition to the attuned ensemble, the show’s orchestra (Katie Burns on cello, Ethan McGraw, percussion, and Russ Callison on guitar) is near perfect under the direction of Alex Michael Powell, who plays piano and the show’s deeply resonant reeds.
The musicians deftly shade and illuminate the many moods of Tesori’s score: They introduce a comforting if complicated buoyancy with the opener; deliver a whacky kid exuberance when the Bechdel children rehearse their advertisement for the family biz (“Come to the Fun Home”); and locate the excruciating in Bruce’s melancholy, increasingly frantic and furious “Edges of the World” and the differently defeated notes in Helen’s lovely “Days and Days.”
Is ”Fun Home” fun? Absolutely. It also continues to be affirming in its heartbreak, wit and familial reckoning.
Lisa Kennedy is a Denver-based freelancer specializing in theater and film.
IF YOU GO
“Fun Home”: Book and lyrics by Lisa Kron. Music by Jeanine Tesori. Directed by Emma Rebecca Maxfield. Featuring Maya Ferrario, River Hetzel, Adeleia Odekirk, Macaelle Vasquez, Lars Preece, Adrienne Asterita, Aliyah Dickerson, Henry Duffany, Marlene Hall, Elize Brianne Todd and Bridget Burke. Musical director Alec Michael Powell. At Vintage Theatre, 1468 Dayton St., Aurora. Through Feb. 25. For tickets: vintagetheatre.org or info@vintagetheatre.org.
