Fun Home
Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2015 3:57 am
This past Wednesday, I saw a matinee performance of "Fun Home." While the story didn't particularly sound like my cup of tea, I was nevertheless impressed with the musical number from the show that was performed on the Tony Awards. Since it won the award for Best Musical, I was pretty sure I would find it at least fairly enjoyable since my experience of seeing past Best Musical winners had always been quite good.
The individual acting and singing performances were all very good, particularly the two young ladies who played the lead actress as a child and as a college student. Unfortunately, though, those are about the only positives I can come up with for this production. In fact, I might go so far as to say that it's the least-enjoyable Broadway show I've ever been to.
Despite the title, it seemed to be an unhappy show about unhappy people. The musical score had about two songs that I liked, while the rest seemed bland and instantly forgettable. One number appeared to be a blatant rip-off of "Born To Boogie" featuring the lead girl and her two brothers dancing around - and on - a piano, complete with the three of them ending the song by falling down on the stage and lying on their backs with limbs spread out as the scene faded to black (sound familiar ?). It also had several raunchy scenes that most members of the audience found uproariously funny, but which seemed pretty offensive to me.
It's being performed in a theater-in-the-round, where no seat is more than about 7 rows from the stage. Because of that, it sounded like they didn't bother to mike the performers. Problem was, though, whenever they would turn and face the audience on the other sides, it made it very difficult to hear the dialogue.
To be fair, I was very tired when I went to the show, having gotten up at the crack of dawn that morning to go see a taping of the TV show "Kelly and Michael." I'm also guessing I was not part of the target audience for this show. Still, despite all that, I found myself asking, "This won Best Musical?"
The individual acting and singing performances were all very good, particularly the two young ladies who played the lead actress as a child and as a college student. Unfortunately, though, those are about the only positives I can come up with for this production. In fact, I might go so far as to say that it's the least-enjoyable Broadway show I've ever been to.
Despite the title, it seemed to be an unhappy show about unhappy people. The musical score had about two songs that I liked, while the rest seemed bland and instantly forgettable. One number appeared to be a blatant rip-off of "Born To Boogie" featuring the lead girl and her two brothers dancing around - and on - a piano, complete with the three of them ending the song by falling down on the stage and lying on their backs with limbs spread out as the scene faded to black (sound familiar ?). It also had several raunchy scenes that most members of the audience found uproariously funny, but which seemed pretty offensive to me.
It's being performed in a theater-in-the-round, where no seat is more than about 7 rows from the stage. Because of that, it sounded like they didn't bother to mike the performers. Problem was, though, whenever they would turn and face the audience on the other sides, it made it very difficult to hear the dialogue.
To be fair, I was very tired when I went to the show, having gotten up at the crack of dawn that morning to go see a taping of the TV show "Kelly and Michael." I'm also guessing I was not part of the target audience for this show. Still, despite all that, I found myself asking, "This won Best Musical?"