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At the moment, the road is full and several shows are pulling in $1 million a week. Gold said he's often approached by people stunned that they connected with "Fun Home," despite its very specific story. "It's not because everyone has a closeted father who kills himself. It's because everyone has a father," he said. The poignant show, based on Alison Bechdel's graphic novel memoir about growing up as a lesbian with a closeted dad, coincides with the Supreme Court preparing to rule on whether to allow same-sex marriage nationwide. If you want to see the best plays & performances around the San Francisco Bay or beyond, read our reviews.
The theatre has staged more than 8,000 performances and seen such stars as Edith Piaf, Isadora Duncan, Ingrid Bergman, the Lunts, Katharine Hepburn, Carol Channing, Sir Ian McKellen, and Hugh Jackman. He is also lending his voice to upcoming animation projects for both Disney and Netflix. He has enjoyed acting in local theater projects, and is excited to work with the Coachella Valley Repertory for the first time. In his free time, Griffen enjoys surfing, playing drums, and designing rollercoasters. When not performing in musicals, Tinnaro’s love of the intimacy of cabaret has led her to develop several different cabarets incorporating a unique perspective and passion for musical theatre.
LISA KRON
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. Helen attempts to reassure Small Alison that the psychiatrist will help her father, but she too refuses to elaborate. Bruce starts a vicious argument with Helen and breaks several of her possessions along with some library books.
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"). Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. "Fun Home" got both, and its creators and producers are proud that a musical with a lesbian character as its lead — unprecedented for Broadway — will tour the nation. Laura Kepley, the artistic director of the Cleveland Play House, said theater professionals have to be bold and provocative or risk losing audiences to film, TV and video games.
Original production
The production closed on September 10, 2016, after 26 previews and 582 regular performances. 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. Medium Alison writes to her parents, asking for a response to her coming-out letter.
The first U.S. regional production opened in August 2017 at Millbrook Playhouse in Clinton County, Pennsylvania, Bechdel's childhood home and where Fun Home takes place; it was directed and choreographed by Courtney Laine Self. Vermont Stage Company produced the musical in Burlington, Vermont, where Bechdel wrote the graphic memoir; it ran for 29 performances in October 2017. Fun Home premiered Off-Broadway at The Public Theater in previews on September 30, 2013, and opened officially on October 22, 2013.
DAVID ZINN
42nd Street Moon is proud to present the Bay Area regional premiere of this five-time Tony Award winning triumph, a refreshingly honest, wholly original story about seeing your parents through grown-up eyes. The production of Fun Home, which began performances at the Curran January 25, marks the first event of 2017 at the newly renovated theatre. Based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic-novel memoir, Fun Home has book and lyrics by Kron, music by Tesori, and direction by Sam Gold. Following a successful Broadway run, the show launched its first national tour October 2, 2016, in Cleveland, Ohio.
Alison remembers a time when Bruce took her and her brothers on a trip to New York City. After a long day, Small Alison, Christian and John settle into sleeping bags. He reassures his daughter that he's just going out for a paper, but Alison realizes he was probably going cruising. Medium Alison is angered by a noncommittal letter from Bruce responding to her coming out. At a luncheonette with her father, Small Alison notices a butch delivery woman and feels an inexplicable kinship with her ("Ring of Keys").
ROBERT HAGER
In a phone call with her father and a journal entry, Medium Alison expresses her anxiety about starting college ("Not Too Bad"). At the Bechdel Funeral Home, Small Alison and her brothers John and Christian perform an imaginary advertisement for the funeral home ("Come to the Fun Home"). Medium Alison hesitates outside the door of the college's Gay Union, and is flummoxed when she meets Joan, a confident young lesbian. Bruce invites Roy, a young man whom he has hired to do yard work, into the house. Bruce begins to seduce Roy in the library while Helen is playing the piano upstairs, trying her best to ignore it ("Helen's Etude"). As she works on her memoir in the present day, successful middle-aged cartoonist Alison Bechdel recalls two time periods in her life.
The 8PM evening performance on Wednesday, February 15th, will have audio descriptive services offered. To purchase tickets in the appropriate area for this contact the box office.
Writer/artist Alison Bechdel's book Fun Home, a memoir in graphic novel format, was published in 2006 to critical acclaim. Its subject is Alison Bechdel's coming of age, with particular emphasis on her relationship to her father, Bruce. Bechdel's coming out as a lesbian is complicated by the revelation that Bruce was a closeted homosexual whose extra-marital affairs included underage males. Four months after Bechdel comes out to her parents, Bruce is killed by an oncoming truck; although the evidence is equivocal, Bechdel concludes that he committed suicide. Take a look at the first national tour of the Tony Award-winning musical Fun Home. The touring production stars Kate Shindle as Alison, with Broadway cast member Alessandra Baldacchino as Small Alison and Abby Corrigan as Medium Alison.
Michael Reno is a Southern California-based Music and Theatre Professional whose career has spanned over 40 years. He has composed music for numerous theatre, film, television and corporate productions. His work includes arranging for Disney Animation, Hallmark, Elton John, Tim Rice, the Kennedy Center, Miss America, Lawrence Welk, and many others. He was the producer of “Sister Act the Musical” which premiered at the London Palladium in June of 2009.
Gyllenhaal proposes to star as Bruce Bechdel, with Gold directing his first feature film. S focus on the individual experience of a lesbian, calling it "the most daring, relentless analysis of homosexual identity on the New York stage right now". Kalle Oskari Mattila, in The Atlantic, however, argued that although the musical presents the novel's themes clearly, its Broadway marketing campaign "obfuscates rather than clarifies" the queer narrative of the original novel. An Australian co-production of the Melbourne Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company, directed by Dean Bryant and choreographed by Andrew Hallsworth, featured Lucy Maunder as adult Alison, Adam Murphy as Bruce and Marina Prior as Helen. It played at the Roslyn Packer Theatre in Sydney in 2021 and at the Arts Centre in Melbourne in 2022 after delays due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Milo Ward , Belen Quinto , Addison Sandoval Director Maureen O’Neill draws the best from her excellent cast, orchestrating comic, crowd-pleasing scenes. Child Alison and her brothers create a hilarious TV commercial for the funeral home where the family lives. Meanwhile, college-student Alison transforms from bumbling heterosexual to outed lesbian. Lipman, the coed, unlocks her sexuality with the funny song “Changing My Major to Joan.” Her voice and attempts at sensual dancing amuse us. Although, when she seeks the approval of her mother and father, she learns of her father’s homosexuality. “Fun Home” is a deeply personal play that draws us in to how the individual stages of a child’s life develop into the emotional acceptance of the adult.
The first is her childhood, around age 10 , 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 , when she begins her first relationship and comes out of the closet as a lesbian. Every once in a while a musical comes along that surprises, moves and excites audiences in ways only a truly landmark musical can. Built in 1922, the Curran recently underwent a major rehabilitation that included newly remodeled lobbies and bars, refurbished seats, carpeting, lighting, and more.
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