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Post by steven22 on Sept 4, 2018 10:54:05 GMT
If anyone has an extra...I’d be willing to buy or trade. I have a ton from Fun Home in NY...
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Post by anthony40 on Sept 4, 2018 11:38:03 GMT
If anyone has an extra...I’d be willing to buy or trade. I have a ton from Fun Home in NY... I have a Fun Home flyer that I’m selling on eBay, but no theatre program |
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 9, 2018 12:06:13 GMT
Saw Fun Home with my dad. That was fun. My brother took my mum to Oedipus, mind, so he still wins.
“All happy families are alike. Every unhappy family is unlike in its own way”.
What I found hard to watch in Fun Home is that Fun Home is about “happy families” (or to rephrase that, fun homes...). It’s about families who smile for the cameras, with daughters in pretty dresses, who “polish and shine” – and what we have to repress to get there. Fun Home is one of the best shows about repression and unresolved lives you could hope to see; about family and all the mess that comes with; about love too. I found it a wringing look at how we lie to ourselves and each other, then a fantastical musical about why we should accept. Ultimately this all converges a message of hope, love, mess and reality. It’s complicated, and messy, but uplifting, optimistic, gentle, and wonderful.
“Chaos never happens if it’s never seen”. This line is through what I read the piece: keeping parts of ourselves unseen – because we consider it chaotic – and what that does. No other artwork deals with emotional repression so horribly accurately, yet so subtly. How many sentences, lines in song, are left unfinished? In fact, how many moments – the siblings playing games, Alison watching TV – are interrupted? More psychologically, what about Alison’s diary entries: “Saw a dead body today. Went swimming” – the necessary emotional response itself is interrupted. Compare in an early song “He wants, he wants, he wants…” with Teenage Alison’s own “I want I want I want I...”, or with Young Alison’s later “I feel… I want… to… I mean…” – most musicals have an ‘I want’ song, but to have the crucial ‘I want’ unfinished, repressed, explicitly unable to be expressed... What’s its other leitmotif? “Maybe not right now”. Thoughts aren’t given time to be thoughts, emotions are left unsaid then unfelt – for Bruce because of small-town America, for Alison because of Bruce, for Helen because of her family. Through both being so deeply closeted, we see where this repression ends up – self-doubt at best, suicide at worst. Of course this converges with the telephone wire duet, a fantasy all about hindsight and the realisation that, ultimately, what is left unsaid right now may always remain unsaid – which is why to keep Helen so repressed but for one song tells more than her singing twenty songs could (everyone is hurt by someone else’s repression), and why to end this on a contemplative note is ideal. In Alison there’s hope, but in all of it there’s great psychological realism. In behaviour, Bruce later expresses jealousy of Alison’s freedom to come out, but how many false starts did Alison have before she was able to feel free – and is old Alison free of Bruce? For Bruce, society represses him, whilst for Alison family does, the self does – both bring different horrors. Thus through Bruce it’s a broadly political piece about why societal prejudices are so dangerous, and through Alison it’s a study of the unconscious and unspoken but ever-present prejudices of those we love, and fear – and the juxtaposition of father/daughter shows how interlinked, and dangerous, these two repressions are; about how dangerous any and all repression is. Having written that, I really think this oversimplifies it, and makes it more of a ‘think piece’ than a ‘character piece’ when it’s both – and as a character piece it’s bloody heartbreaking from beginning to end, its book almost documentarian in how easily it portrays its characters’ home lives.
The genius of musicalising, not dramatising, is that chaos never happens if it’s never seen – but heard? A documentarian drama about repression remains repressed – the music liberates it. Like all families (like Tolstoy), to leave something unspoken seems safe, but by having romantic strings under Bruce’s nervy flirtations, metronomic control under Helen’s lines, that doorbell arpeggio leitmotif to let us enter the fun home, the chaos unseen is nonetheless felt through every unfinished musical melody. Anyone who has ever hidden anything from their family – or who has had something hidden away from them – can recognise the setting, the speech, the scenario, but hear the inner yearnings in the music.
Except the funeral parlour song, that was just badass.
This cast, incidentally, is perfect – all have form at playing characters saying it all behind the eyes. Bruce is portrayed with strange, unpredictable unknowability, yet Varla lets us understand him and care despite keeping his distance, from his stilted precision earlier to his manic open-eyed floundering as it finished, both twisted forms of the free person he wants to be. Jenna Russell can play everyday so well (perhaps the most difficult thing to do) and broke me in “Days and Days”. All three Alisons have a curiosity and eager determination that, as that curiosity becomes more adult and grounded, feels like the evolution of one person. I also loved the simplicity of the intimate staging, and especially what seemed deliberate allusions to comic-panels – very two-dimensional blocking, especially with shadows against a white wall (just occasional fleeting visual cues, thought that was very cute). My reading of the late set reveal was that, when the children were children, none of it actually mattered – the family really mattered more – but the more Bruce developed the house the less he developed himself, thus building quite a hideous cathedral to his own repression – “polish and shine”. Or possibly it’s just a metaphor for Alison now seeing things as they are in reality, though I prefer to read it as Bruce not seeing things as they are.
At its heart, Fun Home is an absolute celebration of freedom and being yourself, because on the surface it’s the inverse of this – a wrenching study of kowtowing to the pressures society, family, convention demand. The book itself tells a story only half-spoken, but the music speaks for the family’s suppressed emotions. Whether it’s Helen unable to come to terms with what Bruce can’t finish, or Adult Alison unable to do the same… And incidentally, I don’t think I’ve used the word ‘lesbian’ once, because so simply does the drama accept Alison and Bruce as gay and the drama is about the worlds prohibiting them from coming out, repression a villain and homosexuality a given – and that makes it high amongst the best piece of LGBT art I’ve ever seen. I have a tin ear for ‘be yourself’ works, but the difference with Fun Home is it never pretends that being yourself, for anyone (Bruce/Helen/Alison, gay/straight, male/female, whatever job or hobby or lifestyle), isn’t chaotic, but to ‘polish and to shine’ for society is to begin on a path with more chaotic consequences. Instead, it argues, always see – never repress, always accept.
P.S. Quick note that the sound balance in the first song or two wasn’t great, but was a lot better afterwards, so kudos to whoever’s on the soundboard for picking up on a problem and solving it.
P.P.S. Also, I’ve been going to the Young Vic for years, but never eaten at the Young Vic. It’s lovely! Had a delicious grapefruit lemonade, an exquisite vegan burger, and a cheesecake which is apparently a tribute to The Inheritance.
P.P.P.S. I’ve got to say somewhere that David Lan is a genius and a hero of mine and will be much missed.
P.P.P.P.S. All of that said, it’s still only my second favourite musical based on a comic book…
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Post by Deleted on Sept 10, 2018 19:49:02 GMT
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Post by karloscar on Sept 10, 2018 22:26:09 GMT
I really enjoyed reading your article, and while I agree with most of what you say, I'd add that Fun Home the musical is very different from the novel, and you need to credit Jeanine Tesori and especially Lisa Kron for what they achieved. Alison didn't write Ring of Keys or Days and Days or Telephone Wire. Her book inspired them, but there's a huge leap from the page to the stage giving voice to these characters and Lisa Kron deserves credit for that. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2018 7:07:28 GMT
I really enjoyed reading your article, and while I agree with most of what you say, I'd add that Fun Home the musical is very different from the novel, and you need to credit Jeanine Tesori and especially Lisa Kron for what they achieved. Alison didn't write Ring of Keys or Days and Days or Telephone Wire. Her book inspired them, but there's a huge leap from the page to the stage giving voice to these characters and Lisa Kron deserves credit for that. Sorry, as it was a personal reflection rather than a proper “review” and on my personal blog rather than a published piece I chose brevity/simplicity in my referencing the text. (Didn’t think I was being marked on my referencing) I’ve read the original novel, and most of everything both Bechtel and respectively seen what Tesori has written (off the top of my head I couldn’t quote all that I’ve seen Lisa Kron do, hope I don’t get marked down for that) While I take your point, it’s a shame you can’t accept someone’s personal reflection on an experience without being condescending and nit-picking. And frankly assuming I don’t know all the above. |
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Post by karloscar on Sept 11, 2018 8:35:48 GMT
Oooh touchy! Just think that credit should be given to writers when it's due. That's not nitpicking. It's like saying Chris Bond wrote Sweeney Todd and Hugh Wheeler and Sondheim were mere bystanders.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2018 8:45:32 GMT
Oooh touchy! Just think that credit should be given to writers when it's due. That's not nitpicking. It's like saying Chris Bond wrote Sweeney Todd and Hugh Wheeler and Sondheim were mere bystanders. Yes but there was a way to say it without being a condescending Tw*t about it. I'm a writer, so kindly do one with your lofty notions about how I should or shouldn't write about it. As above, if it was a proper review I'd be citing everyone down to the front of house if it was relevant. An after the fact reflection on the power of the piece, that is frankly already overlong, I thought could live without. Plus anyone reading it, is likely a musical theatre fan who knows all this. |
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Post by karloscar on Sept 11, 2018 9:06:34 GMT
A writer who resorts to insulting people who make a valid point about a piece they publish is clearly not much of a writer. Alison Bechdel ( you even mis-spell her name !) did not write the musical, and you give her credit for things she did not create. As a "writer" I'd expect you would want to be given credit for your work. Yours "condescending Tw*t"
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2018 9:24:46 GMT
This gave me all the feelings, and brought back many from the performance. Made me rather tearful, which I often think is the hallmark of good writing. Thanks for writing it. |
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Post by rosmersholm on Sept 11, 2018 9:37:33 GMT
Transfer still not confirmed. No theatres free until next year so cast/team waiting for news.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2018 9:44:00 GMT
This gave me all the feelings, and brought back many from the performance. Made me rather tearful, which I often think is the hallmark of good writing. Thanks for writing it. Thank you so much, that's really kind of you to say (honestly it makes all the difference when someone takes the time to say something nice) |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2018 10:12:25 GMT
This gave me all the feelings, and brought back many from the performance. Made me rather tearful, which I often think is the hallmark of good writing. Thanks for writing it. Thank you so much, that's really kind of you to say (honestly it makes all the difference when someone takes the time to say something nice) Well, it's just so much easier to criticise, right? To break something down, rather than to build things up. Building things up requires creativity. Many people don't have that. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2018 11:15:20 GMT
Thank you so much, that's really kind of you to say (honestly it makes all the difference when someone takes the time to say something nice) Well, it's just so much easier to criticise, right? To break something down, rather than to build things up. Building things up requires creativity. Many people don't have that. Well quite. And shouting the loudest, and repeating the same is always the most pertinent point right? But thank you for your kinds words, putting into words what it meant to a lot of people was my point. As I'm sure the entire creative team would appreciate. |
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Post by cheesy116 on Sept 11, 2018 14:31:32 GMT
Transfer still not confirmed. No theatres free until next year so cast/team waiting for news. I really hope they get something sooner rather than later, my urge to see this again is very strong. |
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Post by Rory on Sept 20, 2018 14:45:44 GMT
Disappointing. I'm surprised.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2018 14:49:53 GMT
Unless it is transferring and she just hasn't been asked . . .
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2018 18:19:28 GMT
There isn't any theatres that will be free for this show to come in sadly, at least a show that could hold it. All the theatres that will be free soon are too big for this show to sustain a run really. Even theatres that haven't announced availability as of yet.
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Post by Rory on Sept 20, 2018 18:21:27 GMT
I thought it had been tipped for the Playhouse in Feb?
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Post by westendwahwah on Sept 21, 2018 0:06:30 GMT
Transfer scrapped I think :/ shame
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Post by partytentdown on Sept 21, 2018 19:03:41 GMT
Transfer scrapped I think :/ shame I think the YV still feel a little burned by their transfer of The Scottsboro Boys a few years back and may be wary about transferring musicals. It is not a cheap thing to do, and that show (which was a huge hit at their own theatre with a similar level of hype and great reviews) was a real struggle in the West End, even in a fairly small theatre, and was really only buoyed up by private investors. I think it would take a lot of confidence for them to move this into town. |
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Post by showtoones on Sept 21, 2018 19:43:48 GMT
I saw this show in NYC and found it be be mediocre at best. I know its the common sentiment to say that it s amazing because that's what we are "supposed to say," it left me cold. For me it was the thing of the emperor's new clothes. I didn't get the hype at all. I found it too etherial and indulgent for my taste. While the performances were fabulous across the board and Ring of Keys is a great song, it didn't move me at all (and I cry at everything)
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2018 20:14:20 GMT
I don’t think that’s entirely fair when many of us just in the small sample here had genuine emotional responses. “It’s not my bag” or “I didn’t enjoy it” is totally fair and reasonable- we’ve all been there. But I really don’t think this show in particular is one that people “just say” they like to look good.
My own reasoning- shared by many is not far above. It’s always fine not to enjoy a thing but it’s not fair to dismiss others emotional response based on your own.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2018 20:20:03 GMT
I saw it in New York and didn't really connect with it either.
Then I saw it at the Young Vic and it took my breath away. Sometimes it's about the show, but sometimes it's about who you are when watching the show. We don't all have to like the same thing as the next person, even when the next person is your past self.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2018 21:34:56 GMT
I saw it in New York and didn't really connect with it either. Then I saw it at the Young Vic and it took my breath away. Sometimes it's about the show, but sometimes it's about who you are when watching the show. We don't all have to like the same thing as the next person, even when the next person is your past self. Yes and I think we’re saying the same thing- but dismissing the show outright because you (an editorial you 😉) didn’t connect with it, dismisses what it might mean to someone. And that applies to anything be it Bat Out of Hell or Fun Home. Hell Im even willing to concede One Man Two Governors isn’t intrinsically a bad show just because I hate it. And I hate NOTHING like I hate that show. |
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