Family values at the edge of night: Southbank Theatre Company produces 'Fun Home'

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Over my mostly adolescent years as an Episcopalian, I never had the
opportunity of hearing the graveside liturgy that reminds us, according to the Book of Common Prayer: "In the midst of life we are in death."

 Somehow I picked up that precise reminder long ago and usefully thought of those ancient words of devotion, both obvious and paradoxical as they are, while attending a performance of "Fun Home" Thursday night. The season-opening production by the Southbank Theatre Company carries the magic of charm and searing revelations as it casts an authentic aura of bitter and illuminating truth at Butler University's Shelton Auditorium.

Bruce uncovers Small Alison's forbidden casket fun.
 

The show's title turns out to be family slang, also with a whiff of paradox, for "funeral home," the Bechdel family business in a small Pennsylvania town. In the graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel, which forms the basis of this lilting yet  profound musical by Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron, the fun is very much undercut by the daily dealing with mortality that supports the five-member family. 

Yet its foundation is shaky to fatal effect as father and husband Bruce (Patrick Vaughn) struggles with his closeted gay identity. Death is indeed embedded in his interior life, not quite covered by his outward presentation as a skilled restorer of old homes and secondary-school English teacher. That amounts to layers of identity that mother and wife Helen (Afton Shephard) has to adjust to. Bruce's hair-trigger temper keeps interfering with his Renaissance Man pretensions. He's a control freak without his essential self under control. 

Adult Alison is caught in middle of marital spat.
The high spirits that the girl Alison embodies and uses to transform herself are worked out in the artist's search for her own identity as she matures. Director Marcia Eppich-Harris rightly calls "Fun Home" an origin story, outlining the painful yet liberating gestation of the creator of Dykes to Watch Out For, a comic strip celebrating queer identity. 

Kron divides the lead character three ways, into an Adult, a Medium, and a Small Allison. The story is embodied in the second and third of these Allisons (Emery Haley and Elli Richart, respectively), with the grown-up version (Julie Lyn Barber) acting mainly as narrator and interpreter. Yet the genius of the show is to allow the audience to assemble the parts imaginatively and appreciate the coherence of Allison in toto.

Adult Alison contemplates artistic vision.
The smooth movement of those Allisons around the set under Eppich-Harris' direction lends unerring assistance to that project.

Set and lighting design (by Scott Hall and Lexi Brouwer, respectively) trace the fine line dividing the real world from Allison's free-floating graphic fantasies. Freshly created representations of Alison's cartoon-influenced art are essential to the production's look. 

Tesori's tunes, to Kron's lyrics, are skillfully woven into the action, with seamless support here from a backstage band directed by Kristin Cutler. Musical highlights are a smartly designed mock-commercial starring the Bechdel kids (delightfully choreographed by Andre Williams), college student Allison's shell-bursting coming-out song, and the complaint-and-confession solos of Bruce and Helen. Supporting roles are in competent hands, and something extrarordinarily life-affirming radiates throughout the cast. 

"Chaos never happens and it's not seen" is a line repeated by Helen from the first act, where it advises the audience of the inevitable explosion to come, fortunately to fuel Allison's liberation. In the midst of life the Bechdels are in death. Small Allison's vision of flying above the chaos lofts a promise that movingly prevails, whatever perennial truth the Book of Common Prayer may hold.

[Photos: Indy Ghost Light]

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