While I am hyped for ‘Ring of Keys’, and Brooke Haynes as Small Alison does indeed knock it out of the park, the show’s standout number for me is Jenna Russell as Alison’s mother Helen confessing how much she’s lost to Bruce’s self-destructive behaviour in ‘Days and Days’. You can absolutely feel the magnetic effect that such a mercurial nature has on his daughter – the pull of a toxic relationship, the devastation, the walking on eggshells, all for the hope that the good times will come back.

I am particularly blown away by Zubin Varla as Alison’s father Bruce, swinging between intellectual, patriarchal, brusque, desperate and childish. Although I’ve stuffed toilet paper in my pockets in readiness, I don’t cry for a show about not having closure, a lot of it is reassuring. The set, for most of the show, is minimal and versatile. I’ve also been thoroughly impressed by a YouTube video of its best-known number, ‘Ring of Keys’, in which a young Alison sees her first butch lesbian and feels an immediate pull she doesn’t yet have words for.Ī month before I see the show, I come out as bisexual Fun Home becomes part of my post-coming out immersion into queer pop culture and I’m curious to see if I’ll relate to Alison’s experience.ĭirected by Sam Gold, the Young Vic production is restrained and intimate as musicals go, with an onstage cast of just 11. I know who Alison Bechdel is and that the musical cleaned up at the Tony Awards several years ago. I haven’t read Fun Home the graphic novel before I see Fun Home the musical, but neither have I done much of any other background reading. This year it finally transferred to London and runs at the Young Vic until 1 September.īoth the graphic novel and the musical are loved for their own merits, but how does consuming one before the other affect how both are viewed? Emily Zinkin read the graphic novel before seeing the Young Vic production and Ellie Wilson saw the musical before reading the graphic novel. It was turned into a musical by Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori which was first performed in the USA in 2013, picking up five Tony Awards in 2015. Her much-acclaimed autobiography, Fun Home, is a graphic novel exploring her childhood and her relationship with her father who, she discovers just having come out herself in college, has been having affairs with men. Dykes to Watch Out For features a diverse cast, most of whom are lesbians, as they go about their lives and react to current public affairs. She also wrote and illustrated the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For from 1983 to 2008. You might think that’s a low bar (it deliberately is) but it’s astonishing the number of things that still don’t pass. She invented the Bechdel test, which gauges the feminist credentials of a piece of media on whether two women characters talk to each other about something that isn’t a man. There are several reasons why you have probably heard the name Alison Bechdel.

Fun home comic