Show guide
Fun Home
Fun Home is a musical memoir about cartoonist Alison Bechdel piecing together her relationship with her closeted father, Bruce, adapted from her graphic novel of the same name.
- Broadway premiere
- 2015
- Music by
- Jeanine Tesori
- Genre
- Drama
- Setting
- 1970s
Fun Home: quick answers
What is Fun Home about?
- Fun Home is about cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who looks back at her childhood in her family's funeral home and her own coming out in college as she tries to understand her closeted gay father, Bruce, and his death.
When did Fun Home open on Broadway?
- Fun Home opened on Broadway on April 19, 2015, at Circle in the Square Theatre and ran until September 10, 2016, for 582 performances, after premiering Off-Broadway at The Public Theater in 2013. It won the Tony Award for Best Musical.
What kind of musical is Fun Home?
- Fun Home is an intimate memoir musical with an original score by Jeanine Tesori and book and lyrics by Lisa Kron, adapted from Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir. It mixes songs with spoken scenes and moves back and forth in time.
Where and when is Fun Home set?
- Fun Home is set mainly in Beech Creek, Pennsylvania, moving among Alison's childhood in the 1970s, her first year of college, and the present day.
Has Fun Home played in London's West End?
- Fun Home has not played the West End. Its London production ran at the Young Vic, an Off West End theatre, from June to September 2018.
The story of Fun Home
Fun Home follows Alison Bechdel as an adult narrator looking back on her childhood in rural Pennsylvania, where her father Bruce ran the family funeral home, taught high school English, and obsessively restored the family's Victorian house while secretly pursuing relationships with young men. As Alison moves through her own coming out as a lesbian in college, she revisits memories of Small Alison as a child and her mother Helen navigating a marriage built on silence.
The show unfolds in a nonlinear structure, with three ages of Alison sometimes appearing on stage together as she tries to understand her father's hidden life, which ended in his death not long after she came out to her parents. Its themes of memory, identity, and generational difference give it an unusually intimate, literary quality for a Broadway musical.
The music and the makers
Fun Home features music by Jeanine Tesori and a book and lyrics by Lisa Kron, adapting Alison Bechdel's acclaimed graphic memoir for the stage. The score moves between wry, playful numbers evoking childhood and 1970s pop culture and quieter, more searching songs that carry the show's emotional weight.
Tesori and Kron structure the music around Alison's attempts to draw her father in a single, coherent panel, giving the songs a sense of piecing together fragments rather than telling a straightforward story. The result is an intimate chamber score built for a small cast and an in-the-round staging rather than a big ensemble spectacle.
Fun Home on Broadway
Fun Home opened on Broadway in April 2015 at Circle in the Square Theatre, staged in the round, after an earlier Off-Broadway run at The Public Theater. It won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015, along with awards for its score and book, and Michael Cerveris won the Tony for Best Actor in a Musical as Bruce.
The production was notable as the first Broadway musical centered on a lesbian protagonist, and Sydney Lucas, who played Small Alison, became known for her performance of the song Ring of Keys. Fun Home is widely regarded as a landmark for LGBTQ representation in mainstream musical theatre.
Fun Home: frequently asked questions
Is Fun Home based on a true story?
Yes. Fun Home is adapted from Alison Bechdel's 2006 autobiographical graphic memoir about her own childhood and her relationship with her closeted father.
Where and when is Fun Home set?
Fun Home is set mainly in Beech Creek, the small Pennsylvania town where Alison grows up, and moves among three periods: her childhood around age 10 in the 1970s, her first year of college, and the present day, as the adult Alison, a cartoonist, works on her memoir.
Is Fun Home a sung-through musical?
No. Fun Home moves between songs and spoken dialogue scenes rather than being sung all the way through, and its Broadway cast album even includes some of that dialogue to help listeners follow the story.
Did Fun Home win the Tony Award for Best Musical?
Yes. Fun Home won the 2015 Tony Award for Best Musical, one of five Tonys it took home that night, along with Best Book of a Musical, Best Original Score, Best Actor in a Musical for Michael Cerveris, and Best Direction of a Musical for Sam Gold.
Is Fun Home still running on Broadway?
No. Fun Home closed on Broadway on September 10, 2016, after 582 regular performances at Circle in the Square Theatre. A London production followed at the Young Vic in 2018.
When did Fun Home open on Broadway?
Fun Home opened on Broadway in April 2015 at Circle in the Square Theatre.
Who composed Fun Home?
Jeanine Tesori composed the music, with a book and lyrics by Lisa Kron.
What is Fun Home about?
It follows cartoonist Alison Bechdel as she looks back on her childhood and her relationship with her closeted father, Bruce, based on Bechdel's graphic memoir.
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