FUN HOME A DARK HOME: Local cast shines in Varscona musical
“You can’t go home again,” said author Thomas Wolfe.
Perhaps you can physically go back – but the old Regent Theatre where you first saw Casablanca and Robin Hood is now a strip mall. You can’t build forts any more in Brown’s Fields out back – they don’t exist. And memories of Mom and Dad are all that’s left of 39 Victoria Street.
Plain Jane, a local theatre company specializing in small or forgotten musicals, is giving us a chance to return to that place where you grew up and will never be able to leave. This pocket musical is called Fun Home – playing until April 20 at the Varscona Theatre. This coming of age (and coming out) story won several Tonys in 2015, including Best Musical and it’s based on a graphic novel memoir by Alison Bechdel.
The ingredients of this entertaining production directed by Dave Horak are admirable. The music by Jeanine Tesori taps into both the persistence of memory, and its baffling and frustrating lack of substance. The book and lyrics by Lisa Kron are a perfect companion to the music; both contribute to the show’s blend of nostalgia and yearning for a time that never was.
Alison Bechdel is a well known lesbian graphic artist. Around the age of 40, Alison (Jocelyn Ahlf) set out to pen an autobiography on her Pennsylvania upbringing – inspired by the recent suicide of her father. Families come in all forms, and what makes a family is not some checklist of ingredients. The dynamics of remembering are wayward but similar. Bringing it all back in her art didn’t really work for the artist, so she calls on herself as a child (Jillian Aisenstat), and as a college student (Bella King) to set her memories in motion. She relives her childhood and copies them down in her artist’s pad.
At first the family looks fairly normal – presided over by a focused, fussy and somewhat charismatic father. The childhood Alison remembers is off-kilter, and cracks begin to show. Her father taught school, ran a business that restored old homes and buried people from his funeral home (Fun Home!). He was also a raging, closeted homosexual. All her life, meanwhile, Alison knew she was fascinated by other girls, but it was not until she arrived in college that she was unlocked by Joan (Karina Cox) – which leads to her hilarious ode-to-being-lesbian love song, Changing My Major (to Joan).
The rest of this remarkable musical focuses on the dissolution of the family, but it’s more than just a simple-minded story of dysfunction. There is a lot of fun. The kids whip up a commercial for their father’s funeral home while riding on a casket. There are a couple of uplifting songs. At one point, all on stage turns into The Partridge Family in a snappy ’60s-type pop song. There are several powerful solos.
Ahlf has played every kind of role, from dramatic to knock-about comedy. She is particularly adept at musical comedy and shines in this role. The family’s matriarch, Helen (Kate Ryan), whose silent battle with resentment at what her life became, delivers a powerful and tear-inducing exploration of her lifetime of repression (Days and Days).
The father Bruce (Jeff Haslam) even goes farther in a compelling solo that finally finds him standing alone on a busy highway facing an oncoming truck (Edges of the World). Haslam is one of Edmonton’s most prolific and practiced actors. You generally find him gracing Stewart Lemoine’s elegant comedy-dramas, and he’s made his reputation in many other areas. It’s welcoming to see him stretching his dramatic wings again and bringing depth to a conflicted character. He is joined by King in a poignant duet (Telephone Wire) where the searching woman is trying desperately to communicate with her enclosed father shortly before his death. The rest of the cast, and some quite young (Gabriel Gagnon, Carter Woodley, Connor Woodley) are impressive and belt the songs with a projection and verve that belies their age. Most noticeable is Aisenstat, who as a life-loving child unequivocally loves her father. As both actor and singer, she sets the tone for the heartbreak to come. The music is complex and is ably delivered by the cast under the subtle direction of Janice Flower.
In Horak’s sensitive reading of the words and music, and the delivery of his exemplary cast, we are pulled into the circle of the Bechdel family. We come to realize that the unique experiences of these people, as seen through a dimly-remembered childhood stumbling toward adulthood, may not be typical, but the universal of all families is not far away.
This gem of a musical demonstrates that, maybe if only for a little while, you can go home. As Alison observes at the end, “Every so often there was a rare moment of perfect balance …”
Photos by Mat Busby
