Brilliant Performances In ‘Fun Home’

If you want to expand your musical theater horizons beyond our area’s revivals of tried and true shows, then rush to Rhinebeck Theatre Society’s production of “Fun Home,” the barrier-breaking, altogether exquisite play that won the 2015 Tony Award for best musical.

Based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel memoir, the show looks back at Bechdel’s complicated relationship with her father and growing up in a funeral home. She a proud lesbian cartoonist, he is a closeted gay man who was killed during her first year in college when he was hit by a truck in what is depicted with alarming suddenness and stunning impact as suicide.

Now almost the same age as when her father died, the Alison of “Fun Home” (an excellent Ashley France) is trying to understand why he killed himself and what, if anything, father and daughter had in common. It is a wrenching journey that playwright and lyricist Lisa Kron has filled with insights tersely yet tenderly delivered. Composer Jeanine Tesori’s score is varied, rich in humor and genuine emotion. (Kron and Tesori were the first all-female songwriting team to win a Tony.)

None of this would matter in a so-so production. But the Rhinebeck show is so professional in look, feel and delivery — with not a single equity actor — it could move to Off-Broadway in a heartbeat. Played on the floor of the theater of Rhinebeck’s Center for the Performing Arts, “Fun Home” is both intimate and, at times, overwhelming.

We see and experience the events of Bechdel’s turbulent childhood and college years through her eyes at age 43, as she is beginning to draw and caption her memoir. This middle-aged Alison is always on stage with her sketch board, observing scenes from her youth, often punctuating them with heartfelt cries of too-late recognition: “I didn’t know; I should have been paying attention; I had no idea that my beginning would be your end.”

The damage that a lifetime of lies and ignoring the truth can do is summed up in “Days and Days,” given shattering voice by Alex Heinen as Helen, Alison’s mother, who has known her husband was gay since early in their marriage. Another amazing song, “Ring of Keys,” is performed by Eliza Petronio as young Alison — the conceit of the play is to have three Alisons, young, college-age and middle-age, on stage together — in a stunning moment of understanding when she feels kinship with a butch delivery woman at a diner. Later college-age Alison (Mary Kate Barnett) celebrates her acceptance of being gay in the joyfully humorous “Changing My Major” (to Joan, her first girlfriend).

The success or failure of any “Fun Home” production depends on the actor playing Bruce, Alison’s father. Michael Cerveris won a Best Actor Tony playing the role on Broadway, and Jared Allyn Decker does a superb job in Rhinebeck. Big of body and voice, Decker’s Bruce is compelling in his continuous struggle between containing and expressing his true nature. This is not a pretty role — Bruce is a short-tempered perfectionist, a controller of his family, determined to make them and the world behave, even dress, as he believes proper — and Decker gives it great humanity.

“Fun Home” is a triumph in Rhinebeck. I have seldom, perhaps never, seen a better show in any of our community theaters. Dorothy Luongo’s direction is sensitive and expert, Andy Weintraub’s set and lighting just right. The entire production is proof of what commitment can produce, even in supposedly amateur theater companies.

 “Fun Home” runs weekends at the Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck through June 24. Call 845-876-3080 or go to centerforperformingarts.org for tickets and directions.