In ‘Fun Home,’ art mediates the unraveling of a family mystery
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
In the backdrop of Pigott Theatre, there are a handful of massive, gorgeous, anatomical panels. They seem like sketches at first, equal parts Michelangelo and TED graphic designs. At first, they seem like meta-references to the graphic-novel nature of Alison Bechdel’s 2006 memoir, the book Theater and Performance Studies’ (TAPS’) main stage musical “Fun Home” is based on. But a closer look also reveals their narrative function: by projecting different patterns onto these panels, Stanford’s “Fun Home” tells its story through a secondary visual-arts axis.
Directed by Adin Walker Ph.D. ’25, “Fun Home” centers around Bechdel’s discovery of her lesbian sexuality and her relationship with her closeted, secretive father, Bruce (Henry Lleyton Cargill ’26). The narrative is dispersed and highly non-linear. There is Adult Alison (Lyle Belger ’25 MA ’26), who seeks to unravel the mystery of her father and his death; Small Alison (Maddie Garfinkel ’28), who still believes in the invulnerability of parenthood and finally, Medium Alison (Alexis Tuchinda ’28), a college freshman beginning to understand the types of people both she and her father have become.
The trifold of Alisons gives “Fun Home” an exceptional amount of space to play with. Adult Alison serves as an anchor to the narrative world. She is a witness to the memories of her younger selves and an author scrambling to piece together the story of her own life through these million, broken moments. And she is unique in her ability to break through temporal barriers: in one scene, Belger hands Tuchindia a pencil to journal with before reading the latter’s journal entries over her shoulder. Belger is gorgeous in portraying Alison’s desperate, gnawing need for resolution — a resolution that she sometimes conflates with the medium of her message. “I’m drawing. I’m drawing. I’m just drawing. I’m remembering something, that’s all,” she says. There are other lies she tells herself, too.
Small Alison is the immediate focus of Adult Alison’s attention. She is flamboyantly boisterous, a true believer in the promise of the world. The pigtails and overalls go a long way in creating this impression, but so does the energy Garfinkel imbues into Small Alison. Whether she’s crouched in front of the TV or nagging her parents about her latest adventures, Garfinkel is spontaneous — a light whirlwind of chaos in the way real 10-year-olds are. But she is also a proxy through which Alison traces the secrets of her past. In one scene, we find Bruce seducing Alison’s babysitter, Roy (Ryder Thompson ’27). Diegetically, Small Alison is bugging her mother by the downstairs piano (“Helen’s Etude”). On stage, however, Garfinkel is only mere feet away from Cargill, a bleak reminder of how little Alison understands her father, despite their physical proximity.
“Fun Home” is, in many ways, a piece about centering. The book is Bechdel’s attempt at centering her relationship with her father; simultaneously, it tells the story of how she centers her own sexuality. The TAPS production shines brightest when it leans into this centrality. By deftly creating minimalized environments where certain props take center stage (Alison’s dorm room bed, on which she realizes her sexuality, comes to mind), Stanford’s production team simultaneously spotlights certain concepts, images and phrases.
Nowhere is this done better than the climactic moment of the musical, which peaks as Alison and Bruce embark on one final drive across their small, rural Pennsylvanian town. “Telephone Wire” is gorgeous. It is quotidian in all the best ways — and mournful in the most regretful. On one side of the divide is Bruce’s broken, half-offered attempts at sharing his own sexuality. On the other side, there is a now-Adult Alison, desperately pleading for her younger self to connect with her father one last time. In their attempt and failure to find familiar connections, we are reminded of everything we should have said to the people we left behind. “Say something, talk to me,” Belger screams at her nonexistent younger self. “Say something, anything.” But the car Belger and Cargill sit in is merely two seats and a steering wheel. There are no wheels. The car can’t be changed. When Alison and Bruce arrive back home, they are also arriving at Bruce’s soon-to-come death.
But if “Fun Home” evokes the ghosts of the past, it also reminds us that absolvement can be found through creativity. When Alison struggles to label her memory of her family’s trip to New York halfway through the drama, she frames it in terms of her comic. Is it “Cluelessness” or “Denial?” Belger asks. “How ‘bout ‘Family Fun in New York?’”
As Alison must eventually admit to herself, she doesn’t know. What is her relationship to her father? What did it mean for her to be openly gay, and for him not to be? Did she kill him by coming out? Who is she, both with and without her father? “Every so often there was a rare moment of perfect balance,” Alison sings (“Flying Away”), “When I soared above him.” This is the closest she comes to a true epiphany. It is through the process of the play — the process of creative expression and reflection — that she is able to find the answers to the questions that plagued her.
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