While we’ve been in class together this quarter, the musical Fun Home just opened on Broadway (official opening April 19,
2015). Here’s a video trailer
(Links to an external site.)
to pique your interest.
Those of us in the musical theater field awaited this show with bated breath, as the buzz grew and grew and grew. We all
awaited the score by “Child of Sondheim” Jeanine Tesori–would this be her huge breakthrough? Reviews have been absolute
rapturous: (“At the risk of hyperbole, Fun Home is the best musical of the century.”) In its review
(Links to an external site.)
, the New York Times calls it an “impeccably shaded portrait” and directed with “vivid precision.” The musical leads the
Tony Award nominations with 12. It is really, really good.
Fortunately, Fun Home has been on Spotify for a while, so I have included it in the playlist for two quarters now. Here
is the entire cast recording
(Links to an external site.)
.
For this extra-credit assignment, should you choose to take it on, I would like you to wonder about how the story
(originally a graphic novel) is told through these songs. What emerges from this music, and how do you respond to it? Can
you tell how each song is contributing to the narrative? Do you get the story? (Of course, you are missing text, staging,
etc.) But how do you receive this music in light of what you’ve learned this quarter in class?
Here is a little summary from GoogleBooks to orient you:
“A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home,
sexual angst, and great books.
This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel’s sweetly
gothic drawings. Like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, it’s a story exhilaratingly suited to graphic memoir form.
Meet Alison’s father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family’s Victorian home, a
third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual
who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately
heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter’s complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from
assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned “fun home,” as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship
achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in
late adolescense, the denouement is swift, graphic — and redemptive.”
You can organize this however you choose: song by song, overview with examples, etc.
http://www.broadway.com/videos/156066/video-clips-of-the-moving-new-musical-fun-home-starring-beth-malone-sydney-lucas-mi
chael-cerveris-more/#play
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/20/theater/review-fun-home-at-the-circle-in-the-square-theater.html?_r=0
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