The “fun” in the title is short for funeral, a reference to the family undertaking business inherited by Alison Bechdel’s father. But there is some fun, too, in this heart-filled musical adaptation of the cartoonist’s illustrated memoir. First seen in the UK in 2018 and now revived by director Sarah Frankcom in a fluid in-the-round staging, it brings a light touch to a story freighted with emotion.
Published in 2006, the graphic novel describes the author’s sexual awakening – she kissed a girl and she liked it – one that coincided with the discovery of her father’s clandestine gay life. In the musical adaptation by Lisa Kron (book and lyrics) and Jeanine Tesori (music), it becomes a layered reckoning of past and present, as the 43-year-old Bechdel (Jodie McNee) reflects on her student self (Alice Audrey O’Hanlon) reflecting on her childhood self (Felicity Moore at my performance).
Each has her own perspective on her conflicted father (Nigel Harman), who is at turns charming, narcissistic and brutal – and dominates her imagination. Their mother (Alex Young) is more unknowable still, having allowed herself to be subsumed by her mercurial husband.
In this respect, it has the exposed-nerve trauma of Long Day’s Journey into Night, no family member capable of seeing the others for who they are, the parents doing the best for their children even while bequeathing them a generational pain. The central tragedy – Bechdel mentions casually that her father killed himself – is made more troubling for being inexplicable. The cause is irresolvably out of reach.
Yet this is also a show full of brightness in which Moore, as the youngest Bechdel – joined at my performance by Reggie Kempson and Morris McKinley as her siblings (all phenomenally good) – can launch into a Jackson 5-style funk number around an empty coffin, or the whole company can sing Raincoat of Love, a feelgood pop song with the positivity of a TV theme tune.
There is soul in the heart-on-sleeve numbers sung by Harman and Young, but there is also joy, irony and lust. Who could not love O’Hanlon singing about her first sexual encounter in Changing My Major (“to sex with Joan”)?
Tremendously performed, it is a show full of knotty conflict, queer celebration and a hope born of awkward survival.
• At Royal Exchange theatre, Manchester, until 1 August.
