Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home Now Coming To Broadway As An Acclaimed Musical

Three Alisons, one awesome adaptation.
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We’ve been keeping an eye on the musical adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s critically acclaimed graphic novel memoir, Fun Home, since word of the project was first announced back in 2011. The Fun Home musical, written by playwright Lisa Kron and composer Jeanine Tesori, has had an amazing life since then, and is now coming to Broadway!

Fun Home originally premiered off-Broadway at The Public Theater in New York in 2013, and critics showered it with praise. The show was Pulitzer finalist, and young Sydney Lucas, who plays Little Alison, became the youngest person to win an Obie Award for her performance. It seems like a move to Broadway was inevitable.

Panels from Fun Home

For those wondering what a musical version of Fun Home would even be like, The New York Times describes it this way:

The show, with a subject that is not typical musical fare, is a sort of theatrical Russian doll. A 40-something Alison (Beth Malone) tries to examine, for her cartoons as well as her sense of self, her own experience as an Oberlin student (Emily Skeggs) and as a child (Sydney Lucas).

The show is not chronological — the stories of the Alisons, their father (Michael Cerveris) and their mother (Judy Kuhn) are interwoven — and on Broadway it will be staged in the round, suggesting visually that the unfolding events are memories swirling around the cartoonist.

An adaptation of an amazing graphic novel that also stars September from Fringe? Count us in!

Fun Home opens April 19 at the Circle in the Square Theater.

(Image courtesy of Fun Home)

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Teresa Jusino
Teresa Jusino (she/her) is a native New Yorker and a proud Puerto Rican, Jewish, bisexual woman with ADHD. She's been writing professionally since 2010 and was a former TMS assistant editor from 2015-18. Now, she's back as a contributing writer. When not writing about pop culture, she's writing screenplays and is the creator of your future favorite genre show. Teresa lives in L.A. with her brilliant wife. Her other great loves include: Star Trek, The Last of Us, anything by Brian K. Vaughan, and her Level 5 android Paladin named Lal.