{"id":1637,"date":"2018-07-03T17:57:03","date_gmt":"2018-07-03T16:57:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1637"},"modified":"2018-07-03T17:58:08","modified_gmt":"2018-07-03T16:58:08","slug":"propwatch-the-pencils-in-fun-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2018\/07\/propwatch-the-pencils-in-fun-home.html","title":{"rendered":"Propwatch: the pencils in Fun Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The urge to rewrite the past is irresistible. To make yourself more cool, your family more content, to turn grim endings into happy ones. Fun Home<\/em> (at London\u2019s Young Vic), the engrossingly imaginative musical based on Alison Bechdel\u2019s graphic memoir, writes, draws and redraws the author\u2019s past. Early on, it announces its two defining plot questions: how did Alison come out? Why did her father kill himself soon after? We already know what happened, but Alison wants to tell it true.<\/p>\n

The musical<\/a> (incisive words by Lisa Kron, gloriously stippled score by Jeanne Tesori) doesn\u2019t disguise its comicbook origins. Sam Gold\u2019s production, designed by David Zinn, makes are no attempts to frame the action in cartoon panels, which is probably just as well \u2013 Sidi Larbi Cherakoui\u2019s manga-styled Pluto<\/em> was hyperactively striking and incredibly dull. Instead, adult Alison hovers over the story, puzzling at memory, wiping the tarnish of silence and secrecy off her fraught family history.<\/p>\n

We see three Alisons \u2013 schoolgirl, college student, adult (Kaisa Hammarlund, pictured above by Marc Brenner,plays the last with beetle-browed intensity). Sometimes one at a time, sometimes all at once. All three often have a pencil to hand \u2013 and a pot crammed with yellow pencils sits on the older narrator\u2019s desk, amid sketchbooks and drafts. She\u2019ll often propose a caption to a scene we\u2019ve just watched, or are about to \u2013 and then will try another, and another, hoping to nail the shadows of shame and concealment. Her own growing lesbian selfhood \u2013 brilliantly awkward then gloriously assured \u2013 is accompanied by a realisation that her father, Bruce, is a gay man who tried to live in a straight marriage, only to damage himself and those around him.<\/p>\n

Many of the memories turn on art, especially as the family lives in a home restored by dad to museum-levels of historic shine (the \u2018fun home\u2019 is both the local funeral parlour, which Bruce runs alongside his teaching career; and their own family home of surprises). For Alison, drawing comics is a way of corralling the world, and a way of becoming herself. A fraught scene shows her schoolchild self intent over her homework, drawing a map of her family\u2019s journeys. It sounds cheerfully unrealistic \u2013 family home rubbing eaves with the Tower of Pisa. Dad objects \u2013 he argues that landscape drawing will display his daughter\u2019s artistry, do her credit, help her achieve the fine art career he hasn\u2019t enjoyed himself. The scene turns ugly \u2013 enjoyment chills, chatter quiets, dad\u2019s stormcloud sarcasm takes over. Zubin Varla\u2019s voice, a dark-toned cello perfect for conflicted authority in Shakespeare, is perfect here too \u2013 another patriarch creating misery.<\/p>\n

But comics are the thing for catching behaviour on the fly. Older Alison moves around the action, often pulling her desk around on its castors. Pencil is always in hand \u2013 to record, to rethink, to revise. The charming father is also a churn of loathing. The fulfilled mother is desperately unmoored. The good daughter may have to find her own independent sense of goodness. Scribble, erase, scribble again.<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The urge to rewrite the past is irresistible. To make yourself more cool, your family more content, to turn grim endings into happy ones. Fun Home (at London\u2019s Young Vic), the engrossingly imaginative musical based on Alison Bechdel\u2019s graphic memoir, writes, draws and redraws the author\u2019s past. Early on, it announces its two defining plot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[542,322,321,34,128],"class_list":{"0":"post-1637","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-musical","9":"tag-props","10":"tag-propwatch","11":"tag-theatre","12":"tag-young-vic","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1639,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1637\/revisions\/1639"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}