Joyous, heartbreaking “Fun Home” at the Huntington

Arts

A stellar cast delivers an exquisite version of the celebrated musical based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel.

“Fun Home” at the Huntington Theatre, Boston, through Dec. 14.

Judging by its recent productions, here’s a truism about the Huntington Theatre: You’re likely to walk out of there knowing more about what it means to be human than you did when you went in. This is especially true of the theater’s current show, an exquisitely executed take on the tragic and hilarious 2013 musical “Fun Home.”

Based on the award-winning graphic novel memoir by the cartoonist Alison Bechdel, it quite literally revolves around her efforts to put that family history to paper: Her drawing table is visible on stage throughout, a constant reminder of her solitary and sometimes painful attempts to mine her own past. It’s a past that includes her own coming of age as a lesbian (“a lesbian cartoonist,” specifically), and her fraught relationship with her father, a closeted gay man who vacillated wildly between being caring and abusive, sometimes in the course of the same conversation. Oh, and this all takes place in and around the family business, a local funeral home — the “Fun Home” of the title.

If that all sounds heavy, it is. But the story is leavened by so much relatable humor — Alison’s early romantic foibles will make you cringe, but in the best way — and directed with just the right light touch by Logan Ellis to ultimately be just as joyous as it is heartbreaking.

A lot of that is owing to Sarah Bockel, who makes the most of what is, in many cases, a thankless role: She plays a grown-up Alison, who — like her drawing table — is on stage throughout the show to “witness” her own memories of her childhood and adolescence. The conceit doesn’t 100% work: It turns out there are only so many mostly wordless reactions you can have to your own past traumas and embarrassments when you can’t actually participate in them. 

But, Bockel makes the most of those limitations, in particular when Alison’s yelling out sarcastic and ironic “captions” to the action on stage, and when she’s given the opportunity to harness the frustrations from her childhood through the moving music and lyrics by Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron. Her numbers “Maps” (“I can draw a circle his whole life fits inside,” she sings of her doomed father) and the urgent, ultimately mournful “Telephone Wire” — in which grown Alison finally gets to step inside one of her own adolescent memories — are absolutely highlights. 

Of course, none of this would work without a convincing “Small Alison” and “Medium Alison” to inhabit those memories, and casting directors Janet Foster and Brett Duffy deserve a raft of credit for finding Lyla Randall and Maya Jacobson — they simply embody these characters, in a way that feels both uncannily real and profoundly moving.

Randall, as Small Alison, is a bundle of energy, but also effectively thoughtful in a subtle way as her character starts to grapple with her family’s unusual dynamics. And her delivery of “Ring of Keys” — the musical’s standout song, encapsulating all the confusion, humor, and longing of Alison’s childhood — is a dead-on show stopper. Randall’s voice is childlike enough to be truly touching, while avoiding any of the “sun’ll come out tomorrow” histrionics that can sometimes mar children’s performances.

Jacobson’s Medium Alison, meanwhile, looks and feels like she was plucked right out of Bechdel’s graphic novel, and has clearly mastered the art of revealing myriad complicated emotions, sometimes opposing ones, in a single look or expression. (Sit up close if you can.) Her performance captures what it really must feel like to experience the fits and starts of lesbian self-discovery, not to mention the desire to be a professional cartoonist, which could not have been an easy combination. 

As for Jacobson’s voice, its aching mezzo soprano carries with it that same waterfall of competing emotions that her acting does, in particular in “Changing My Major,” a glorious paean to young love/lust/obsession that will be achingly familiar to anyone who’s experienced any of the three.

Also key to the success of “Fun Home” are Nick Duckart as Alison’s troubled father Bruce and Jennifer Ellis as Helen, her long-suffering mother. Helen is probably the most tragic character in the play, having spent decades trying to sustain a “normal” family life that she knew, basically from the start, was based on something other than real love. Ellis conveys a genuine sadness and frustration in the role, and her quiet, quivering soprano makes “Days and Days,” the story of her long-crumbling marriage, simply devastating.

Characters like Bruce, meanwhile, run the danger of coming across as (excuse the expression) a comic book villain, there simply to provide the source of the main character’s traumas. But, that’s not the case here, thanks to the combination of Bechdel’s unsparing source material, Kron’s multilayered book, and Duckart’s uncanny ability to draw out the sad turmoil that lays beneath Bruce’s troubled facade — one that encompasses no small amount of mental illness in addition to sexual frustration. Musically, on numbers like the heart-wrenching “Edges of the World,” his voice recalls the untethered melancholy of Mandy Patinkin’s finest Sondheim work.

Of course, a side effect of the show not shying away from Bruce’s serious flaws, and embracing Duckart’s complex portrayal of them, means that in some scenes the audience is forced to sit in its discomfort at Bruce’s actions — yes, actually feel things, which is a hallmark of “Fun Home” as a whole.

The main players are aided and abetted by a solid supporting cast: Sushma Saha as Alison’s college love interest, Caleb Levin and Odin Vega as her siblings, and Wyatt Anton as various young objects of Bruce’s untoward affections. Musically gifted to a fault, it’s a cast of singers who are also expert storytellers: In an era of pop musicals, it’s refreshing to hear a modern score that doesn’t force the actors to belt at the top of their lungs or add riffs and runs every five seconds. The music of “Fun Home” speaks for itself, and the performers’ notes float and radiate through the auditorium. As vulnerable as these characters are, their voices are strong and impressive.

And it’s all done in service of a story that does an amazing job breaking down the source material — 230-plus pages and thousands of hand-drawn panels — to its essence, taking some liberties for dramatic effect but leaving the bones of the narrative intact. That includes some moments of sheer hilarity, like the kids filming their own commercial for the family business in the raucous, Motown-style “Come to the Fun Home.” Others, involving Bruce’s sudden pivots and eventual downfall, are wrenching.

A series of set pieces that slide both back and forth and up and down, some well-utilized props — dust flying off an old piece of linen, glimpses of Alison’s cartoons on crumpled papers, and a naked corpse are among them — and some subtle lighting also all add to the mix. (One particularly chilling lighting effect toward the end of the play is guaranteed to make your heart catch in your chest.)

Ultimately, the Huntington’s “Fun Home” is, like life, funny and poignant at the same time, the trials of its characters all the more tragic because of how undoubtedly common they were during the era of Alison’s childhood, and still are on many fronts. “I want to know what’s true,” the characters declare again and again, but in the end, the play is about how it’s possible to learn to live with questions whose answers we’ll never know. In other words, to be human.

“Fun Home” runs at the Huntington Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave., Boston, through Dec. 14, 2025. Buy tickets at huntingtontheatre.org.