River & Rail Theatre Co. Explores Secrets and Truths in ‘Fun Home’ – Arts Knoxville

BY ALAN SHERROD

Successful works of theatre have a way of holding up a mirror to its viewers, its reflection revealing universal truths that touch each individual with memories and revelations specific to their own lives. That is certainly the case with the River & Rail Theatre Company’s deliciously impactful new production, the musical Fun Home, which opened this past Friday at the Old City Performing Arts Center. In fact, what could be more universal than the changing relationship with one’s parents as years go by, and how one confronts the family realities of secrets held and secrets told?

Admittedly, universal truths aren’t necessarily the best basis for an entertaining musical—but they are in this production. Based on Alison Bechdel’s autobiographical graphic novel of the same name, and featuring a music score by Jeanine Tesori and book/lyrics by Lisa Kron, Fun Home had a successful off-Broadway run at New York’s Public Theatre in 2013 before opening on Broadway in 2015. That Broadway production won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Original Score.

Fun Home is the story of a girl’s relationship with her father over the years as she pieces together an awareness of her own sexuality and confronts the reality of her sweet-sour relationship with her father. Kron’s largely non-linear narrative flows freely between three periods in Alison’s life, narrated by the adult Alison, but each period portrayed by a different actress and each touching on different familial circumstances that come together like puzzle pieces. Composer and lyricist have carefully interwoven the musical numbers into the narrative so as to be as natural a reinforcement as is possible, given the genre.

Having developed her childhood hobby of drawing into a successful adult vocation of cartoonist, adult Alison (Laura Beth Wells) is desperately trying to make graphic sense of the incongruous details of her own existence by recalling the puzzling facts of her father’s life and their relationship. At the center of the childhood Alison’s ( Zoe Belle Sullivan ) world in a small Pennsylvania town is a nostalgic retrospection of her father, Bruce Bechdel (Brian Gligor), a local high school English teacher who also dabbles in historic house restoration and runs the family-owned local funeral home. Little by little, Kron allows us to learn that Bruce is married to Helen (Katy Wolfe), but lives a closeted existence in which he picks up young men (various roles all played by Robert Parker Jenkins) for clandestine sex, hidden from the unsuspecting Alison and her siblings (Lillian Wells Crawford and Penny Peterson). That’s the way family secrets go.

Director Jessica Holt has placed the adult Alison onstage at points, both to comment directly as she sketches out her remembrances and to observe and relive moments from childhood. Observed, too, is the awakening sexual awareness by college-age Alison (Anna Catherine Smith) with fellow Oberlin student Joan (Emily Helton). Interestingly, Holt has avoided any attempt at visual or personality continuity of Alison over the years, perhaps recognizing the realities of theatre and the fact that people simply change in ways that are unpredictable.

Musically, Fun Home’s songs run the gamut from expected to extraordinary—some wistful, some rousing, some light-hearted, some seriously haunting and full of exasperation—but all seem to work due to this vocally strong and phenomenally capable cast. Of particular note, Ms. Smith’s ode to a new found love, “Changing My Major” was a show-stopper. “Ring of Keys,” a duet sung by Wells and Sullivan was poignant as was “Telephone Wire,” a tear-producing duet with Wells and Gligor. Although Bruce’s wife Helen is a barely defined character, Ms. Wolfe was able to explain a lot in a beautiful “Days and Days,” in which she painfully acknowledges her repressed married life with Bruce.

It seems that the emotion, “If I had only known then…”, is a common denominator for us all. The beauty of River & Rail’s Fun Home is that there is something sweet in its painful realizations about life. Our only hope is that we find a way to survive those moments.

Fun Home continues through June 18 at the Old City Performing Arts Center, 111 State Street. Information and Tickets.

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