Skip to content

Breaking News

Author
PUBLISHED: | UPDATED:

“Fun Home” is the consummate “alternative” comic that became a maverick Broadway musical. The national tour of the show comes to The Bushnell June 20 through 25.

The original format for “Fun Home” was a 232-page graphic novel, beautifully drawn and opting for sensitive blue tinting on its pages instead of bright loud colors. “Fun Home” is a sensitive coming-of-age tale about how its author/illustrator Alison Bechdel embraced her burgeoning sexual identity in a way that her father (a closeted gay man) never could. The book’s subtitle is “A Family Tragicomic.”

“Fun Home” was published in 2006. It became a national best-seller and won a Stonewall Book Award from the American Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table. Connecticut readers already knew Bechdel from her serial comic strip “Dykes to Watch Out For,” which ran in the Advocate chain of weekly newspapers for over a decade. Others may know Bechdel’s name from “The Bechdel Test,” a critical theory she popularized in an episode of “Dykes to Watch Out For” that pertains to the quality of women’s roles in movies.

“Fun Home” wouldn’t appear to be a natural page-to-stage project. Bechdel’s book covers her life from childhood to adulthood and switches locations frequently. It digresses into such topics as art, music, film and existential philosophy. The narrative is augmented with diary entries and dictionary definitions. This all makes its transformation from a graphic novel to a Broadway hit all the more remarkable.

Kate Shindle as the grown-up Alison Bechdel in “Fun Home.”

Following a series of workshops, “Fun Home” premiered off-Broadway at the Public Theater in 2013, where it ran for three months before transferring to Broadway. The show won Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Original Score, Best Direction of a Musical and Best Leading Actor in a Musical. The national tour hit the road a month after the Broadway production ended its run last fall.

It’s fortunate that “Fun Home” found a place in the fertile theatermaking brains of playwright Lisa Kron and composer Jeanine Tesori. Kron co-founded the celebrated New York theater troupe The Five Lesbian Brothers in the 1980s, then became known for solo shows such as “2.5 Minute Ride” (which she performed at Hartford Stage in 2002) and “101 Humiliating Stories” (seen at Yale Repertory Theatre in 1996).

Tesori is the eclectic composer able to summon a different musical style for each show she does. You can revisit Tesori’s 1920s pastiche “Thoroughly Modern Millie” currently at the Goodspeed Opera House (through July 2).

Kate Shindle stars in “Fun Home”‘s national tour as the adult Alison Bechdel. The same character is played at other stages of life by two other performers — Abby Corrigan as “Medium Alison” and Carly Gold and Jadyn Schwartz alternating in the role of “Small Alison.” The role of Alison’s father Bruce is played by Robert Petkoff, well remembered in Hartford for playing Romeo to Calista Flockhart’s Juliet at Hartford Stage back in 1995.

The cast of the national tour of the musical “Fun Home,” based on the graphic novel memoir by Alison Bechdel.

In a phone interview last week, Shindle called “Fun Home” “a show for people who love theater and want to see what the next generation of musicals looks like. But it’s also for people who don’t know if they like musicals.” She says that when she got the part she “knew of Alison Bechdel’s work but didn’t know it well. Then, when I saw the show, I wanted to read everything I could get my hands on.

“When I auditioned, I really had to go after this. I had to convince them that I was right for it.” Playing a real-life writer/artist, it seems, requires a different technique than, say, Sally Bowles (whom Shindle played in the national tour of “Cabaret” in 2000) or her various Broadway turns as Lucy in “Jekyll & Hyde,” the Mad Hatter in “Wonderland” and Vivienne Kensington in “Legally Blonde — The Musical.”

“This show is less in your face,” Shindle suggests. “There’s something about this material that really challenges an audience.”

In her case, “it has to be a special show for me to want to go on tour. This show is particularly special.” Shindle signed on for a full year, with the possibility of a two-month extension this fall. “I’ve rarely done a run this long,” she says.

When not onstage as Bechdel, Shindle has duties to perform as the president of the national union Actors’ Equity. She’s recently had to issue statements to the press protesting proposed cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Last week, Actors’ Equity negotiated a new contract for actors and stage managers who work at regional theaters such as Hartford Stage or the Goodspeed.

Kate Shindle and Robert Petkoff in “Fun Home,” coming to The Bushnell June 20-25.

Producers of “Fun Home” have decided that when this first national tour ends in December, there will not be a second or third tour, as often happens with Broadway shows. Instead, smaller theaters will be able to license the show for their own productions. “That’s amazing,” Shindle says, noting that shows like “Wicked” (which has been on tour for 12 years) and “Phantom of the Opera” (touring since 1991) have yet to license regional productions.

Before the smaller theaters get a crack at “Fun Home,” the national tour will play venues much larger than Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre, where the show ran for 583 performances. The Bushnell, at 2,800 seats, falls in the middle.

“We’ve been in cities where they weren’t sure the show would do well,” Shindle continues, “and people have just loved it. The reaction has been surprisingly awesome. It has just been a wonderful experience.”

Especially for a tragicomic.

FUN HOME, book and lyrics by Lisa Kron, music by Jeanine Tesori, directed by Sam Gold — makes itself at home June 20-25 at The Bushnell, 166 Capitol Ave., Hartford. $25.50-$95.50. 860-987-6000, bushnell.org.