Review: On Theater: Drama and trauma in ‘Fun Home’

The show is called “Fun Home,” but there’s not much fun to be found in this traumatic musical winding up its abbreviated six-day engagement Aug. 6 at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

Instead, we get a father and his daughter dealing with their respective sexualities, occasionally with musical accompaniment. It’s an acquired taste that eventually may be acquired when the lyrical portions of the show begin to take control.

“Fun” actually is short for “funeral” since the family resides in a mortuary the father, a high school English teacher, inherited. He’s got three kids and a wife, but his romantic interests, as we discover early, lie elsewhere.

Novelist Alison Bechdel wrote the story based on her own life and even gave her name to the central character, here played by three actresses at varying stages of their chronological development.

The middle-aged Alison (Kate Shindle), now a lesbian cartoonist, narrates the story as her 10-year-old (Carly Gold) and 19-year-old (Abby Corrigan) selves discover life. Eventually she joins in the action on a pivotal drive with her father en route to his suicide (no spoiler; this outcome is revealed early on).

Of the trio, the younger Gold becomes the most memorable, brimming with childish enthusiasm as she goads her father (Robert Petkoff) into giving her an “airplane ride.” However, her musical number with the other two kids (Luke Barbato Smith and Henry Boshart) falls prey to clarification difficulties.

Corrigan, as a college student discovering her sexuality, soars with her solo “Changing My Major” after a roll in the hay with a fellow coed (Victoria Janicki). Shindle keeps her dramatic distance until the drive with Dad and her haunting number “Telephone Wire.”

Petkoff endows his conflicted character with both heart and abruptness, losing emotional control at the drop of a hat, or a hammer. As his tormented wife, Susan Moniz remains in the background until her big moment, the devastating “Days and Days,” as she contemplates her unfulfilled life.

More of a “play with music” than a musical theater production — which may be why its musical numbers are not listed in the program — “Fun Home” is unlike any Broadway-born show you’re likely to see. It succeeds to the degree of emotional involvement it generates.

Directed by Sam Gold, with choreography by Danny Mefford, “Fun Home” is a visceral exercise in both the joys and the dangers of alternative lifestyles. It’s food for the head as well as the heart at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

If You Go

What: “Fun Home”

When: 7:30 p.m. through Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

Cost: Tickets start at $29

Information: (714) 556-2787 or visit scfta.org.

Upcoming plays’ schedule changes

The Laguna Playhouse has announced a change in its next season’s schedule. Scheduling conflicts have forced the transposition of “Twelve Angry Men” and “The Graduate.”

“Men” will move from March to October, while “Graduate,” starring Melanie Griffith, has been switched from October to March. For more information, call (949) 497-2787.

TOM TITUS reviews local theater.