Chance Theater’s expansive yet intimate Cripe Stage proves the ideal setting for Fun Home, Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir-turned-Tony-winning musical saga of a young lesbian’s coming of age, coming out, and coming to grips with love and loss.

Holly Reichert plays 10-year-old Small Alison, raised with her two younger male siblings (Reese Hewitt as Christian and Christopher Patow as John) in the family-run funeral home that gives the Jeanine Tesori-Lisa Kron musical its title.

Madelyn Velazquez is Medium Alison, starting off college life with the realization that her childhood penchant for boys’ wear over dresses may be more than mere fashion statement.

And Ashlee Espinosa is forty-three-year-old Alison, who despite a successful career as cartoonist/graphic novelist, finds it increasingly difficult to cope with memories of emotional childhood abuse and a young adulthood whose discoveries were met with quite the opposite of unconditional love.

Under narrator Alison’s ever watchful eye, Kron’s Tony-winning book zigzags between Small and Medium Alison, the former finding herself at near constant loggerheads with a father whose mantra would appear to be “My way or the highway,” the latter coming to the disturbing yet liberating realization that her professed asexuality is nothing but self-delusion … and quickly cured by a kiss.

Meanwhile, Bechdel family patriarch Bruce (Ron Hastings) struggles to balance marriage and a series of reckless same-sex hookups with, among others, hunky handyman Roy and at least one underage teen (Matt Bolden in two of his five cameos) as his long-suffering wife Helen (Jennifer Richardson) plays piano études rather than face the truth of her marital lie.

If all this sounds more than a tad dark, well, it’s definitely not Hairspray or The Producers, that’s for sure.

Fortunately for audiences who might otherwise overdose on gloom, composer Tesori and lyricist Kron have lightened things up with a couple of bright-and-bouncy musical numbers exuberantly choreographed by Chance Theater favorite Hazel Clarke: “Come To The Fun Home,” featuring the three preteen Bechdels in Jackson Three mode and “Raincoat Of Love,” whose disco moves reimagine Alison’s parents and siblings as the Partridges.

Still, it’s Fun Home’s dramatic solos that provide the 2015 Best Musical Tony winner with its most compelling moments, in particular “Ring Of Keys,” Small Alison’s eye-opening recollection of a briefly spotted delivery woman’s butch swagger.

Though all of this has previously come together quite terrifically in a couple of big-stage proscenium productions reviewed here, neither of them can match Fun Home as reconceived by master director Marya Mazor, whose lengthwise reconfiguration of the Chance’s larger space seats audience members no further back than three rows from the action.

In addition, having scenic designer Bradley Kaye’s movable set pieces only suggest the various rooms of the Bechdel home (along with Alison’s college dorm, a car or two, and the fantasy world of Small Alison’s dreams) serves Fun Home’s memory play conceit far better than a more literal, realistic setting, and never more so than when set pieces vanish and Small Alison’s Partridge Family fantasy ever so briefly comes true.

Lastly, Mazor’s up-close-and-personal vision gives adult Alison (more a shared lead role than an actual lead) a more palpable presence throughout, especially during extended sequences during which the grown-up Bechdel is a silent witness rather than active participant, allowing Espinosa to shine even more brightly than she did in her all too brief three-performance-only star turn last fall, and never more so than when the grown-up graphic novelist at long last gets to confront her Dad in a car ride she can only wish to have taken.

Reichert gives Small Alison equal parts pluck and heart, her “Ring Of Keys” proving every bit the revelatory showstopper it’s intended to be, while Velazquez’s wide-eyed innocence suits Medium Alison to a T, the 21-year-old nailing the college freshman’s joyous acceptance of her sexuality opposite Ketino Christopher’s appealingly tough but tender Joan, the lesbian co-ed who awakens Alison’s hitherto repressed urges.

Hastings does quite possibly his finest, most dramatic and nuanced work to date as the closeted, achingly human, passive-aggressive monster that was Alison’s father, and his eleventh-hour “Edges Of The World” is an absolute stunner.

Richardson’s Helen is so much a shadow of her former self that her husband’s neglect becomes palpable, rising star Bolden creates five distinctive characters, with special snaps to his mustachioed hunk of a handyman, and Hewitt and Patow are preteen triple-threat charmers as the younger and youngest Bechdel kids.

Musical director/keyboardist Lex Leigh and his crackerjack fellow band members Jimmy Beall, Isabella Pepke, and Jorge Zuniga provide expertly tuned accompaniment and Ryan Brodkin a just-right sound design mix from start to finish, with additional design snaps to costumer Bradley Lock for his nostalgic 1970s polyester confections and Andrea Heilman for her vibrant, evocative lighting.

Kelsey Somerville is stage manager and Stephanie Lim is dramaturg.

Scaled down to intimate-theater perfection from the Broadway National Tour that played the 3000-seat Segerstrom Center a few years back, Chance Theater’s Fun Home is Orange County musical theater at its most powerful and transformative.

Chance Theater, 5522 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim Hills.
www.chancetheater.com

–Steven Stanley
February 8, 2020
Photos: Doug Catiller/True Image Studio

Tags: Alison Bechdel, Chance Theater, Jeanine Tesori, Lisa Kron, Orange County Theater Review