7th July, 2018, matinee
"Perfect balance"
Even
those who aren’t aware of Alison Bechdel will no doubt be familiar with some
aspects of her work. The Bechdel Test (a quantifiable scale of female
representation in the media) has been one of the major influences in 21st
Century pop culture, causing the powers that be and audiences alike to stop and
think about the ways in which women are depicted. I don’t know about you, but I
now almost subconsciously calculate whether a film, tv show or play I watch
could pass Bechdel’s test. Now Bechdel’s own equally important and fascinating
story has been brought to the public eye, in Lisa Kron (Book) and Jeanine
Tesori’s (Music) adaptation of her ‘tragicomic’ autobiographical graphic novel,
Fun Home.
Kron
navigates the unusual source material by dramatizing grown-up Alison’s (Kaisa
Hammarlund) process of reminiscence and illustration. Poised behind her
artist’s bench, she ‘captions’ the scenes as she sees them, images that flit in
non-chronological order, so that we, like Alison herself, must piece together a
meaningful narrative from the pivotal events in her life. The story can be split
into three blocks, each strand building to its individual epiphany. Small
Alison struggles with living up to her father, Bruce’s, expectations – she
wants to watch cartoons, wear jeans and run around with her brothers, while he
insists on her ‘fitting in’ by wearing dresses, tying back her long hair and
drawing precise, traditional pictures as opposed to Alison’s preference for
figurative collage. We see Medium Alison coming to terms with her sexuality and
coming out to her family. All the while, Big Alison endeavours to unravel the
tragedy of her father’s suicide, his openly secret homosexuality, and the role
he played in shaping her childhood.
Like most memory plays, we are aware that
Alison’s version of events is patchy, unfinished and coloured by hindsight and
personal feeling. This is beautifully conveyed in Kron’s book as Alison
frequently stumbles over her choice of words, tries out and discards new
expressions, and generally thinks out loud. As a basic insight into the
approach artists take towards creation, it feels, at once, organic and intimate,
a technique embraced by David Zinn’s set. From jumbled heaps of furniture, to
semi-populated spaces, to the white expanse that echoes a blank canvass, to the
fully realised ornate house on Maple Avenue, Zinn’s design mimics the collage
of images our memories create while also evoking Bechdel’s original
illustrative work.
One
of the aspects I found most moving was Kron and Tesori’s faith in silence. As a
graphic novel tells a story through images, words and, perhaps most
importantly, the spaces in between, Fun
Home’s creators similarly embrace multimodal techniques to enhance the joy
and tragedy of the piece. Rarely have I seen a ‘loss for words’ so
appropriately and satisfyingly portrayed. It may be somewhat incongruous to
say, but within ‘Ring of Keys’, the musical’s breakthrough number, the most
eloquent expressions of self-discovery are found in Small Alison’s moments of
halting inarticulation, there are no words to express the joy and recognition
she feels. Alternately, if ‘Ring of Keys’ is a blazing and triumphant epiphany,
then ‘Telephone Wire’ is it’s melancholic, transient cousin. Alison’s final car
ride with Bruce is brimming with thoughts unspoken and missed milestones, the
fact that Big Alison chooses to relive this memory, physically transposing her
younger self, is revelatory enough.
The
tragedy resides in not only the miscommunication between father and daughter,
but in the uncannily similar but ultimately divergent journeys of Alison and
Bruce. In some ways Bruce is the anti-Alison, seemingly all-knowing, yet
strangely void of truthful discovery. While, despite the retrospective
structure, Alison remains on a progressive trajectory, Bruce seems to stagnate.
Alison can fit her father’s whole life in a small circle drawn on a map of
Pennsylvania – where he was born, where he worked, where he died – and the
‘museum’-like home Bruce painstakingly creates turns out not to be a gift, but
a burden on his family who work tirelessly to maintain its façade. Bruce
refuses to adapt, living desperately in a life he has precision-crafted for
himself, even in his darkest hours believing he ‘might still break a heart or
two’. Yet there are moments of tender acknowledgment; for example, is Bruce’s
gift of a Colette novel to an adolescent Alison a hint that he understands even
what she is yet to understand herself?
Kron
and Tesori (and Bechdel herself, I imagine) don’t provide any easy answers. Truths
are uncomfortable and explanations remain unearthed; Alison’s hypothesising
that her own (successful) coming to terms with her sexuality and identity was
in fact a trigger for Bruce’s breakdown, or the fact that she will never
totally know the torrent of undercurrents belying his life and motives, are
stinging questions that hang over the piece. There is a moment where Big Alison
posits her father’s activities one night on a trip to New York – did he go out
to buy a newspaper? Did he go ‘cruising’? – but, in the end, she knows this is
only conjecture, that she’ll never really know. Despite the pervading theme of
elusiveness, a taster of the satisfaction we crave is quenched in the final
emphasis on Alison’s treasured memory of ‘perfect balance’, soaring above Bruce
playing ‘airplanes’, relishing the infrequent but highly prized physical
contact with her father. Sentimental, most certainly, but a tableau that
perfectly captures the bittersweet flavour of the show.
Tesori’s
score is mature, but never po-faced, with superbly timed pastiches (‘Come To
the Fun Home’, ‘Raincoat of Love’), Sondheim-esque melodic motifs (‘Maps’), and
rousing counterpoints (‘Welcome to our House on Maple Avenue’, ‘Flying Away’).
Gold elicits brilliance from his young cast, with Harriet Turnbull being
perhaps the most expressive and empathetic child actor I’ve seen. For a person
so young, she absolutely nails the comedy, quirks and nuances of the character
while never coming across as overly precocious. Eleanor Kane’s Medium Alison is
just as endearing, her ‘Changing My Major’ is a masterful display of
awkwardness, naivety, and youthful resolve all rolled up into a big bouncing
ball of giddy delight. Jenna Russell once again proves herself the darling of
the theatre world with a subtle performance that reveals mother, Helen’s,
internal anguish, most notably in the elegiac ‘Days and Days’. If someone
doesn’t release the UK rights to Next To
Normal soon I may combust with frustration – that show was made for
Russell. Someone.Do.It.Now.Please.
Amidst
all of the truly impeccable performances, Zubin Varla perhaps leaves the
greatest impression as the enigmatic Bruce. Prosaic yet fanciful, affectionate
but stern, intelligent yet irrational; he is at once a solid presence, a centre
of gravity around which the other characters’ lives orbit, yet Varla emits a
sense that with the merest change in wind Bruce could disappear off the face of
the earth. His admission that ‘beginnings are harder when you’re older’ and
that he’d ‘squeezed out every bit of life he could’ is crushingly stark. As it
stands Varla is my top pick for best actor in a musical come awards season.
Watch this space.
Fun Home exceeds all
expectations. It’s one of those productions where everything – book, music,
performance, design – comes together in perfect harmony and by the final notes
you know you’ve witnessed something sublime. If I could see it again tomorrow I
would jump at the chance, and I hope beyond hope that Bechdel, Tesori, Kron and
Gold’s creation will have further life in the UK.
Fun Home plays at the
Young Vic until 1st September.
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| Kaisa Hammarlund as Alison in Fun Home. Photo: Marc Brenner |
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