Thursday, May 2, 2024

Fun Home review Alison Bechdel memoir-musical adaptation burrows its way into your heart Stage

fun house musical

This matinee performance will be audio-described for blind or low-vision audience members. Using a single earpiece connected to an infrared headset, patrons can listen to trained audio describers give live, verbal descriptions of actions, costumes, scenery, and other visual elements of a performance. Patrons who wish to listen to the description must pick up a headset at the Box Office window. Alison, the protagonist, tells her story in sharp and shadowy memories, full scenes and snapshots; it's more a quest for knowing if not understanding rather than self pity. She explores her life from three perspectives or ages - 'tween, college student, and current day cartoonist.

fun house musical

Grand Performances

Medium Alison proudly tells Joan that she has written a letter to her parents telling them that she is a lesbian, but begins to second-guess herself until Joan kisses her. That night, she is delirious with joy after having had sex with Joan and finally discovering her sexuality ("Changing My Major"). Nathan Solis is a Metro reporter covering breaking news at the Los Angeles Times. He previously worked for Courthouse News Service, where he wrote both breaking news and enterprise stories ranging from criminal justice to homelessness and politics.

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Preview: The Musical 'Fun Home' Opens at River and Rail Theatre Co. - artsknoxville.com

Preview: The Musical 'Fun Home' Opens at River and Rail Theatre Co..

Posted: Wed, 31 May 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Adapted by Jeanine Tesori (music) and Lisa Kron (book and lyrics) from Bechdel’s eponymous 2008 graphic memoir, the show opened on Broadway as the first mainstream musical to feature a young lesbian protagonist, collecting five Tony awards, including best musical. That watershed moment merely touched upon the show’s innovative approach to its subject material, and this gorgeous Australian premiere, under the direction Dean Bryant, is a production infused with the sweeping emotion of its source material. The Tony Award-winning musical Fun Home traces the coming-of-age of lesbian author Alison Bechdel, from her youth, to her years at Oberlin College, and finally to the present, where Alison, now grown, is struggling to write her own graphic autobiography. As Alison reflects on her past, she struggles to make sense of it, particularly her relationship with her father, Bruce, a closeted gay man and the owner of the family business -- the Bechdel Funeral Home (“fun” home, as it’s known to young Alison and her brothers, John and Christian). As she watches her father’s self-loathing consume him, Alison recognizes her own experience of discovering, and ultimately embracing, her identity. As Fun Home progresses, Alison is drawn deeper and deeper into her memories, finally entering into them, desperate (but unable) to reverse her father’s self-destruction.

Details for In Theaters

M&D announces extended run of the musical 'Fun Home' - Conway Daily Sun

M&D announces extended run of the musical 'Fun Home'.

Posted: Mon, 28 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Re-staged for the Circle in the Square (more precisely, theater in the round), the chamber musical benefits from being brought into closer proximity to the audience. That’s a huge advantage for a show with so many introspective, confessional songs. At the same time, the oddly configured stage necessitates much swiveling in place to take in the entire house.

Medium Alison writes to her parents, asking for a response to her coming-out letter. Small Alison watches The Partridge Family, but Bruce angrily switches it off. Small Alison talks to him and finds out that he is going to see a psychiatrist, but he is ambiguous about the reason. Alison expresses annoyance that he lied to her; the reason he was going was because he was arrested for what he did to the underage boy.

News

Investigators said one of the callers was the wounded guard, who described his assailants as wearing hoodies and surgical masks and fleeing on foot after opening fire, according to law enforcement sources who were not authorized to comment publicly on the matter. Emergency radio dispatchers reported the victim as a man in his mid- to late 30s who was shot multiple times and called 911. Several other callers also reported hearing gunshots in the area, according to the dispatch reports shortly after the shooting. Esmailian was recently lambasted by Drake in a diss track amid Drake’s ongoing feud with the rap industry. But sources in law enforcement and the music industry said the incident appeared to be an attempted home invasion with no connection to the music business.

But the narrative keeps circling back to Bruce, whose desperate dalliances with young men may have gone unnoticed by his young children but did not escape the notice of his wife, Helen (a shattering performance from Judy Kuhn). In the absolutely wrenching “Days and Days,” Helen lets us know how unbearable it is to share her life with someone who is living a lie and can hardly bring himself to look at her. Bruce Bechdel (Michael Cerveris) is a complex and morally ambiguous character, a tyrant and a bully who nonetheless loves his children and has a special bond with Alison. Cerveris fully embraces this complicated man and all his bewildering contradictions. It’s only now, as a grown woman, that his daughter finds the courage to make peace with the man.

But while “Fun Home” is likely to keep you wet-eyed for much of its intermission-free 100 minutes, it is also wryly and compellingly cleareyed — or as cleareyed as hindsight allows, when it’s your own family you’re scrutinizing. Clarke conveys a pure innocence to Small Alison, who bursts in adoring identification with a butch delivery woman in Ring of Keys. McKenna is a joy to watch in Medium Alison’s fumbling adolescence, embodying her giddy exhilaration after having sex with a woman for the first time (Changing My Major). And Maunder warmly brings out a mature, yet equally devastating realisation of slipping time and heart-wrenching loss in Telephone Wire. The sources said at least four people were inside the Encino mansion at the time the shots were fired, but they did not know whether Esmailian was among them. Investigators suspect the gunmen planned to break into the home and probably knew of Esmailian’s wealth.

Monday Ratings: All American Posts Season High in Audience, SYTYCD Eyes Low

Beth Malone was nominated for a 2015 Tony Award and Grammy for her game-changing role of “Alison” in Fun Home. Malone most recently starred as the titular character in the world premiere of The Unsinkable Molly Brown, directed by Kathleen Marshall at the MUNY. She originated the role of June Carter Cash in Ring of Fire on Broadway, as well as the roles of Betty Jean in The Marvelous Wonderettes and Alison in Bingo off-Broadway. Other off-Broadway and regional credits include Fun Home (The Public Theater), Annie Get Your Gun (CMT) and Sister Act (Alliance Theatre). On film, Malone can be seen in Taylor Hackford’s The Comedian, co-starring opposite Robert DeNiro and Edie Falco. Other film credits include Hick with Eddie Redmayne, Twist of Faith, The Interview and the upcoming Brittany Runs A Marathon opposite Jillian Bell.

His regional credits include over 40 productions as Resident Stage Manager at the Barter Theatre as well as Shadowlands Stage, Virginia Musical Theatre, and Contemporary American Theatre Festival. Rebecca Pitcher is best known for her portrayal of Christine Daaé in The Phantom of the Opera. Described as having “a glorious voice, and a luminous presence,” Rebecca appeared in over 3,000 performances of Phantom including on Broadway, the US national tour, and in Singapore.

An unforgettable and groundbreaking musical, Fun Home explores the haunting pull of memory and the power it has to alternately destroy or shape, our identity. (It’s like calling everyone “darling.”) But “Fun Home” really earns the praise. Lisa Kron, who wrote both book and lyrics, assembles words and images in unexpected ways to dramatize the bittersweet memoir (based on the 2006 graphic novel by Alison Bechdel) of a grown woman remembering the troubled father she loved in spite of himself.

“Mandisa was a voice of encouragement and truth to people facing life’s challenges all around the world,” Mandisa’s Instagram account said Friday in the post announcing her death. Proceeds raised at the dinner, which is a celebration of the First Amendment, go towards the WHCA and the journalists who work to cover the president. Jost follows in the footsteps of previous comedians who have headlined the dinner over the years, including Roy Wood Jr., Trevor Noah, Jay Leno, Keegan-Michael Key and more.

The history-making Tony win — the first time a musical written only by women won Best Book, Score and Muscal — was a proud moment for Tesori and Kron, who shared their hopes for future female composers and writers with Playbill. Alison considers the connection between her coming out and her father's death. Small Alison has a homework assignment to draw a map of places her family has been to, but Bruce aggressively takes over, drawing it the way he thinks it should look. Alison realizes that despite having traveled widely, her father's place of birth, life, work and death can all be placed in a small circle in Beech Creek, Pennsylvania ("Maps"). Bruce offers a ride and a beer to an underage boy, and it is later implied that they had a sexual encounter.

As she works on her memoir in the present day, successful middle-aged cartoonist Alison Bechdel (Alison) recalls two time periods in her life. The first is her childhood, around age 10 (Small Alison), when she struggles against her father Bruce's obsessive demands and begins to identify her inchoate sexuality. The second is her first year in college (Medium Alison), when she begins her first relationship and comes out of the closet as a lesbian. Prior to joining Studio, she spent eight seasons at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, where she headed the literary department and coordinated project scouting, selection, and development for the Humana Festival of New American Plays. She is the co-editor of eight anthologies of plays from Actors Theatre and editor of 11 editions of plays through Studio.

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