“Fun Home”

We have seen the Broadway road company and the beautiful production staged by Gary Griffin at Victory Gardens, which I thought might be the better of the two. Could this be topped?

For those of you unaware of this Tony Award Winning gem of a musical, it is a story about coming of age and coming out. It is a story about family and family secrets. It is a story about complex lives and mostly it is a story about truth and finding the truth to  take from 2d ( two dimensional) to 3D ( three dimensional). It is a story about understanding yourself, and others. Many families live in a way that others cannot understand. This family is one of those. What appears to be an ordinary small town family turns out to be a far cry from what the neighbors might think, and in the case of Alison, upon her father’s death as she learns more, she finds the hidden truths that were there but never noticed.

As I said earlier this cast is sensational. Let’s start with Small Alison ( tonight played by Maya Keane who is a pure delight to watch and listen to- on other performances Milla Liss takes on the role). Medium Alison (Elizabeth Stenholt truly captures the energy of a young girl away from home finding herself for the first time). Her “Changing My Major” was adorable. Devon Hayakawa as Joan, Medium Alison’s “new friend” is adorable.

The band under the direction of Kory Danielson is well done , never overpowering the singers. The sound ( Adam Rosenthal) and lighting (Mac Vaughy) were just right and the costumes (Jordan Ross) and properties (Jesse Gaffney) worked. The set (Yeaji Kim) was nothing out of the ordinary, but one could see that it was created for easy transitions from scene to scene, so there were never any awkward breaks in the action or the storytelling. The flow of this show must be clean and this production is just that.