Table Of Content
It will be a case of 'Welcome to the House of Fun' when a musical theatre group opens its next production. These 55 venues include legacy theaters, spacious clubs, Sunset Strip mainstays, historic institutions and duct-taped dives. Combined, it’s a patchwork of venues that gives fans of virtually any music genre the opportunity to commune, sing and dance with kindred fans. Until COVID-19 pushed pause on concerts in 2020, most didn’t need to be reminded of live music’s transcendent nature. We took for granted the bounty of stages available on any given night, both in soundproofed rooms and, enabled by a climate perfectly suited for them, at outdoor amphitheaters. In the raucous “Come to the Fun Home,” young Alison (Sydney Lucas, brimming with talent) and her two brothers take control of a viewing room (complete with silk-lined casket) and rock out on a gleeful welcome to their strange household.
StageAgent Distance Learning Hub
The songs play occasionally at a slower tempo than the original Broadway cast recording, which, while drawing out the musical’s pacing slightly more than necessary, brings a new clarity and detail to the score. With Bryant at the helm, the production holds dearly on to Fun Home’s depiction of an artist’s attempt to grasp at the elusive reasoning behind her father’s death – an incident that opens the show. It’s a harrowing place to begin, but it’s tactfully and shrewdly pulled apart by the director, his cast and creative team. Two-time Tony winner Michael Cerveris made his Broadway debut as the title character in The Who’s Tommy. He won a 2004 Tony for his portrayal of John Wilkes Booth in Assassins and a 2015 Tony for his portrayal of Bruce Bechdel in Fun Home.
Original Off-Broadway production
Alison remembers herself, as a child, demanding that her father Bruce play "airplane" with her, while he sorts through a box of junk and valuables he has salvaged from a barn ("It All Comes Back"). Bruce tells the family that a visitor from the local historical society is coming to see their ornate Victorian home that he has restored, and his wife Helen prepares the house to Bruce's demanding aesthetic standard ("Welcome to Our House on Maple Avenue"). In a phone call with her father and a journal entry, Medium Alison expresses her anxiety about starting college ("Not Too Bad").
Top cast
Fun Home 2015 Tony winner: How did a graphic novel become a musical? - Slate
Fun Home 2015 Tony winner: How did a graphic novel become a musical?.
Posted: Mon, 08 Jun 2015 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Concert performances include Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, Carmina Burana, Requiem by John Rutter, and Handel’s Messiah. She made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2011 as the soprano soloist in The Golden Boy composed by Freddie Mercury. Jeanine Tesori is a composer of musical theatre, opera, television and film. She won the Tony Award for Best Score (with book writer & lyricist Lisa Kron) for the musical Fun Home in 2015. Her latest opera Blue (libretto by Tazewell Thompson) received the Music Critics Association of North America Award for Best New Opera.
During that 2006 “Idol” season, Mandisa wasn’t shy about invoking her faith on camera, once making an evangelist-inspired gesture pointing to her heart, head and the sky, and also singing the gospel song “Shackles (Praise You)” during Top 10 week. After her audition, Simon Cowell made cruel remarks to Paula Abdul about Mandisa’s weight; she later cited the life of Jesus as she forgave him. She finished in the top nine in the fifth season of “American Idol,” which included Chris Daughtry and Kellie Pickler as contestants and was ultimately won by Taylor Hicks over runner-up Katharine McPhee. Mandisa was one of the many Christian singers who found a place on the show.
Preview: Marshall Funhouse Hits SXSW 2024 Live - Clash Magazine
Preview: Marshall Funhouse Hits SXSW 2024 Live.
Posted: Thu, 14 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Gordon Nimmo-Smith (he/him) is a Maryland-based sound engineer and designer. By day, Gordon works as the Audio/Video and Stage Operations Supervisor for Shakespeare Theatre Company. “Ring of Keys,” another trenchant musical number, is sung by the young tomboy Alison, who can’t articulate her sexual feelings but wholeheartedly declares her admiration for the butch lesbian who swaggers into a diner swinging a powerful set of keys.
Details for In Theaters
Meet Bruce (Michael Cerveris), who teaches high school English, restores old houses and runs a funeral home in a small Pennsylvania town. As the husband of Helen (Judy Kuhn) and a father of three, Bruce is as divided personally as he is professionally, a fastidious upholder of the perfect-family facade who picks up young men (all played by Joel Perez) on the down low. Musical director Carmel Dean’s tight control of her seven-piece chamber orchestra allows each of her instruments to sing out, from the strings’ pizzicato to the English horn’s recurring motifs.
Esmailian has been featured on various power lists for Variety and other music publications, and frequently posts photos of himself and his home on social media. He and other members of the team were featured on the cover of Billboard in early 2021. A security guard was shot several times outside the Los Angeles-area home of Weeknd co-manager and business partner Amir “Cash” Esmailian in an apparent home invasion, according to Fox11. Christie D’Zurilla is an assistant editor for entertainment news on the Fast Break team. A graduate of USC, she joined the Los Angeles Times in 2003 as a copy editor, started writing about celebrities in 2009 and has more than 34 years of journalism experience in Southern California.
Sam Gold‘s direction brings lucidity to the complex mechanics of staging a story that takes place in three time frames. And Jeanine Tesori‘s haunting music doesn’t sound a bit like anyone else’s music. When her father dies unexpectedly, graphic novelist Alison dives deep into her past to tell the story of the volatile, brilliant, one-of-a-kind man whose temperament and secrets defined her family and her life. Moving between past and present, Alison relives her unique childhood playing at the family’s Bechdel Funeral Home, her growing understanding of her own sexuality, and the looming, unanswerable questions about her father’s hidden desires.
Together with 7 other C-list celebrities from around the globe he will compete for the prize of 5 million dollars. At first, the Funhouse is just as the name suggests, full of wild times, budding friendships, love connections and brewing rivalries. To everyone’s surprise, the fun quickly turns into misery when the first challenge leaves one of the contestants brutally murdered.
Helen attempts to reassure Small Alison that the psychiatrist will help her father, but she too refuses to elaborate. Bruce starts a vicious argument with Helen and breaks several of her possessions along with some library books. Small Alison fantasizes about her family as the happy family singing together on television ("Raincoat of Love"). Lauren Pekel (she/her) returns to Studio Theatre after last stage managing Good Bones. Some of her favorite Studio credits include People, Places & Things, Doubt, Cry It Out, Vietgone, P.Y.G. or the Mis-Edumacation of Dorian Belle, Skeleton Crew, The Father, and No Sisters. Her DC theatre credits include productions with Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Signature Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Theater J, Mosaic Theater, Theater Alliance, and the Kennedy Center.
Regionally, she has worked with the San Francisco Opera’s Merola Opera Program, the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, and Skylight Music Theater in Milwaukee, among others. Lauren is an alumna of the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee’s Theatre Program, with a BFA in Stage Management, and is a proud member of Actors' Equity Association. Debra Booth has a long history with Studio, where she has set designed People, Places and Things; Pass Over; Translations; The Wolves; The Father; The Hard Problem; Constellations; The Apple Family Cycle; Jumpers for Goalposts; Cock; Bachelorette; and many others. This enormously likeable show was a popular hit when it opened at the Public Theater in 2013.
Medium Alison writes a letter to her parents about college life but does not mention Joan or her recent realization that she is a lesbian ("Thanks for the Care Package"). Bruce orders Small Alison to put on a dress, but she would rather wear jeans. Bruce tells her that the other children would laugh at her; she reluctantly obeys him ("Party Dress").
But it’s not all fun and games living under the same roof with their domineering father, the funeral director, who is also a schoolteacher and an absolute fanatic about restoring his Victorian home. The impact of Fun Home, which, following its Tony victories saw an increase in ticket sales, could be far-reaching, and it has already resonated deeply with theatregoers. Cerveris told Playbill.com in a previous interview that he had received messages from people who said his performance as Bruce had inspired them personally. Granted, it’s unlikely that many details of your childhood exactly resemble those of the narrator of this extraordinary musical, which pumps oxygenating fresh air into the cultural recycling center that is Broadway. As Bruce, Murphy finely carries the balance between his character’s captivating charisma and his repressed vulnerability. Prior’s performance elegantly nails his wife’s frustrations at her unhappy marriage, though her stiff delivery sometimes gets in the way of her strong vocals, especially in the moving 11 o’clock ballad expressing this long-suffering regret, Days and Days.
His other Broadway credits include Sweeney Todd, LoveMusik, Hedda Gabler, In The Next Room, or the Vibrator Play and Evita. Alison remembers a time when Bruce took her and her brothers on a trip to New York City. After a long day, Small Alison, Christian and John settle into sleeping bags. He reassures his daughter that he's just going out for a paper, but Alison realizes he was probably going cruising.
Alison explores the tensions her family was under at this time and watches a heated argument between her parents. Helen confesses to Medium Alison her troubled and turbulent life with Bruce ("Days and Days"). Medium Alison, Joan and Bruce have an unexpectedly pleasant evening around the piano. Bruce asks Alison if she'd like to go for a drive, and (adult) Alison realizes that Medium Alison is gone; she joins her father in the car, breaking the boundaries of time. On the drive, she and Bruce struggle to express themselves to each other ("Telephone Wire").
No comments:
Post a Comment