REVIEW: ‘Fun Home’ opens window to reality

MARION — 'Fun Home' isn't always fun, but it's always wonderful, in the deft artistry of Giving Tree Theater's actors and production staff.

It's a huge honor for the young theater to be among the first non-professional troupes granted the rights to stage this award-winning musical. Among its accolades are five 2015 Tonys, including Best Musical, nine other industry awards and more than 30 additional nominations, including being named a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

It's a memory play set to music, as author and cartoonist Alison Bechdel uses her art to try to make sense of her life, swirled in disarray.

We meet Alison at three phases of her life: childhood, college and adulthood. Nothing about her life was conventional, growing up in a house that doubles as a funeral home, which she and her brothers dub the 'fun home.' Her classmates think it's weird, but it's her normal. Her brothers are her constant.

She's a 'daddy's girl,' sharing a love for literature with her father, a mortician who also teaches high school English. Her mother is distant and cold, and a confusing array of adults move in and out of her world, from the gardener/baby-sitter to the rugged delivery woman who seems to embody everything Alison desires.

Abby Zeets gives Small Alison a measure of joy that slowly fades into awkwardness and introversion when Medium Alison (Lauren Galliart) goes off to college. That's where Joan (Nikki Stewart) helps her embrace her sexual identity, leading to one of the show's most delightful songs, 'Changing My Major,' when she decides she wants to study Joan.

Traci Rezabek watches intently as the adult Alison, trying to piece together the fragmented memories that could lead to greater understanding and acceptance of the tragedy that sweeps into her life at her most vulnerable moment.

Everyone in the cast turns in a powerhouse performance, guided by the directing team of Heather Akers, Sarah Anderson and Emma Drtina. The complexity of the music matches the complexity of the themes, and propels the action in ways that make more sense because of the dissonance in the sound.

Audiences won't go home humming a tune, but the music fills in all the missing pieces of the puzzle. And a couple of songs give listeners a chance to relax and smile to an innocent '70s beat reminiscent of the perfect Partridge Family and Brady Bunch of Alison's dreams.

A special round of applause goes to Joshua Fryvecind as the father, Bruce Bechdel. Seemingly kind on the surface, the character harbors sometimes sinister secrets that pick up steam as they unfold, until he unravels in an almost maniacal way. Alison's world shatters as her father's facade crumbles at her feet.

Tricia Waechter provides the counterpoint as the mother who shoves the secrets deep inside until her sad, lonely thoughts come spilling out, adding to Alison's confusion.

Giving Tree made a very smart choice in staging the show with the audience seated on three sides, creating a connectivity between actors and viewers that deepens the show's visceral impact, even during Thursday's final dress rehearsal.

Friday's opening night is sold out, and once word spreads about the beauty of the show, tickets are bound to go quickly for the remainder of the run, which continues through July 2.

This is rare chance to experience a musical full of honesty and power, in a flawless production full of flawed people just trying to make order out of a chaos they may or may not survive.

IF YOU GO

What: 'Fun Home'

Where: Giving Tree Theater, 752 10th St., Marion

When: To July 2; 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays

Tickets: $15 to $30, (319) 213-7956 or Givingtreetheater.com/funhome.html

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com