This Saturday, Deputy Arts Editor Paula Carrión attended the matinee performance of Columbia Musical Theatre Society’s (CMTS) Fun Home, at the Glicker-Milstein Theatre. Content warnings: mentions of suicide and abuse of minors.

Before CMTS’s production of Fun Home began, the show’s director, Bailey Stephen (CC ‘25), stepped out to make an opening speech. The welcoming words invited the audience to “fly along” with the story, as Fun Home is a play about looking for truth and finding sunlight in the darkest times. Stephen’s words definitely rang true as the audience laughed and cried alongside the characters as they navigated their lives’ unexpected turns.

Fun Home tells the autobiographical story of Alison Bechdel, a comic book writer who draws about her childhood memories as well as her college experience, and the struggles of coming to terms with her homosexuality at the same time as she found out about her dad’s own. The play features three versions of Alison: the adult writer, played by Njoki Tiagha (CC ‘27), the young adult in college, played by Ana Huesa (CC ‘26), and the child, played by Hannah Levinson (BC ‘28). Adult Alison remained on stage throughout the whole runtime, jotting down notes and doodles to indicate that all the events of the play represented her creating an autobiographical comic that almost resembled a diary.

The space of the Glicker-Milstein Theatre was set up in the round, where the audience surrounds the playing space on all sides. Lila Ellis’s (JTS ‘28) and Emerson Black’s (BC ‘28) set design included in the walls of the theater a series of printed comic panels from Alison Bechdel’s original tragicomic Fun Home. Some of these comic panels lit up at different points in the show to indicate the part of the story that the play was representing, displaying quotes such as “Gay Union” and “I am a lesbian.” This device was a smart way of grounding the audience and signaling the key moments of the plot.

The story begins with Adult Alison recalling the joys of her childhood: playing games with her two brothers, Christian, played by Garhyson Gaddy (CC ‘28), and John, played by Lilly Gasterland-Gustafsson (BC ‘25), helping her father restore their “bohemian museum of a house” and working at her family’s funeral home, the titular Fun Home. Although in the first musical number we see a happy Child Alison play airplane with her father Bruce, played by Ethan Paulk (CC ‘25), it quickly becomes evident that he is a menacing, oppressive presence in the lives of his children and wife, played by Tatiana Santos Mroczek (BC ‘25). Bruce wants to control everything from the way Alison dresses to how his children behave and how they spend their time. Every time Bruce entered the scene, the children tensed up and stopped playing their games. 

The set was straightforward and effective. There were no superfluous elements, as every object had multiple uses, which speaks to the talented job of set designers Ellis and Black. The main prop was a box with wheels placed in the center, which functioned as a casket at the Fun Home, a bed in College Alison’s dorm, and as Bruce’s car. This multipurpose box was an elegant way of quickly adapting the space to match the jumps between the different life stages of the three Alisons. There were also a few objects such as bundles of books, coffee cups, and jewelry boxes strategically placed next to the audience’s seats, which, along with the in-the-round setup made up for an immersive and enthralling experience. However, this in-the-round setup and the constant turning of the actors made it hard to grasp many of the nuances in facial expression and body language. Although the dialogue and plot were always clear, at a few points the casket completely covered my view of the actors and I missed out on the intensity of important moments such as the highly expected kiss between Alison and her love interest.

The first half of the play was the funniest and most light-hearted, as the audience was introduced to all the characters, and the story centered mostly around an adorable Child Alison, and her brothers. These three actors did a great job of portraying children through their tones in conversation and their skipping around the stage. This childish charm was especially evident in one of the funniest numbers, “Come To The Fun Home,” in which the children are making an ad for their funeral home and which summarized perfectly the feel and message of the whole play. Death and fun are constantly intertwined and are almost inseparable in Alison’s life. The second comedic peak came during Huesa’s performance of “Changing My Major,” as she sang about having sex for the first time with her college crush Joan, played by Abby Cason (BC ‘26), soon after her gay awakening. Huesa as College Alison was hilarious and flawlessly rendered what it feels like to be in love and in college.

Choreographer Victoria Gonzalez (CC ‘27) did a particularly wonderful job. The choreography was always on point and skillfully enhanced the complexity of the relationships between the characters and reflected the tumultuous feelings that Adult Alison is writing about in her comic. The choreography was especially strong during the children’s numbers as it was playful and dynamic.

Nevertheless, not everything was fun and games in the story, since Bruce, Alison’s father, was a loving figure one second and a tyrant the next. Paulk did an amazing job portraying this hot-headed and authoritarian character: his performance definitely stole the show as he convincingly switched between a charming, playful father, a lustful man who wooes minors (played by Ethan Robledo-Pérez (CC ‘28)), and a neglecting husband, all in the span of a few minutes.

Towards the middle of the play, College Alison comes out to her parents through a letter, to which she receives almost no response and is thus forced to make a phone call home to confront her parents. Her father quickly changes the subject while her mother barely wants to talk to her initially, although she ends up confessing to Alison that her dad is gay and has been having affairs with men (many of them underage) throughout their entire marriage. When Alison visits home with Joan, her mother finally sheds away the cold, collected composure and false appearance of perfection that she had held up until that moment. In a peak of emotion, Mroczek delivered “Days and Days,” a powerful song about everything she had to endure by being married to Bruce, trying to maintain a facade of happiness, withstanding his fits of anger, and helping him in all of his restoration projects. This moment was made even sadder by the revelation that this home visit was the last time Alison saw her father before he killed himself. Mroczek, although not always on stage, generated the quiet and melancholy tone of the play and brought the audience to tears on many occasions.

The play ended with Adult Alison breaking her authorial, removed role and interacting with her dad in an imagined car ride in which she wants to bond with Bruce over the both of them being gay. Fun Home is somewhat open-ended and very emotionally complex, as Adult Alison frustratedly questions her dad’s motives to commit suicide but at the same time recounts fondly the moments in which leaping into her father’s arms made her feel as if she could fly.

Overall, as funny as it was tragic, CMTS’ Fun Home was beautifully executed and portrayed with sensitivity the complexities of family relationships, coming of age, and coming out. This production did a wonderful job of portraying complicated family dynamics as well as the fear and excitement of discovering one’s identity and wanting to share it with one’s loved ones. As I left the Glicker-Milstein Theatre I couldn’t help but agree with Director Bailey Stephen in that we truly must try to “fly along” with this story, just as we try to fly along the ups and downs of our real lives.

Header Image via Author