Fun Home @ Playhouse Square, Oct. 2--Oct. 22, 2016

Review by Laura Kennelly

Fun Home offers a bumpy, albeit musical, and speedy flight through author Alison Bechdel’s early years. Now playing at the Connor Palace Theater in Playhouse Square, Fun Home touches on secret sex lives, ambivalent parenting, domination, and obsession, and suicide. Not for the kiddos even though it features three charming child actors.

Based on Oberlin graduate Bechdel’s graphic novel, the musical features gorgeous music by Jeanine Tesori with book and witty lyrics by Lisa Kron. Oskaar Eustis and Patrick Willingham directed this Tony-winning New York show.

When I saw the show in New York at the Circle in the Square Theatre, the audience surrounded the stage from above, so we could look down on the actors. The Connor Palace’s more conventional stage worked surprisingly well, with our attention directed to various areas of the relatively cluttered space thanks to David Zinn’s scenic design and Ben Stanton’s lighting. (The lights were scenery in themselves--and in a very good way.)

Time travel necessary in Fun Home is a challenge since it covers Alison’s early growing up years, college, and career beginning. We see the story through the perspective of grown up Alison (a convincing Kate Shindle), still perturbed by her family. She introduces small Alison (a bouncy Alessandra Baldacchino), a little girl who yearns to fly, and Medium Alison (Abby Corrigan), an Oberlin student beginning to judge her family. All three actors prove likeable and make us fans of “Alison.”

Robert Petkoff plays Alison’s conflicted father, Bruce. The character doesn’t seem as likeable as he did the first time I saw the play, but perhaps that’s because I now know not to trust unsuspecting young Alison’s eyes. Susan Moniz as Alison’s put-upon mother, Helen, does an excellent job with the one-dimensional part the story assigns her. (I’d love for Bechdel to attempt the story from alternating points of view, starting with the mother: PS: Just checked and she did this, see the graphic memoir Are You My Mother? Now we can finish the story.)

Characters supporting Alison’s life journey include Small Alison’s little brothers John (Lennon Nate Hammond) and Christian (Pierson Salvador). The trio gets well-deserved laughs in the ironically-titled “Come to the Fun Home” as they jump in and out of a showroom casket (one of the family businesses is running a funeral home).

Karen Eilbacher shines as the sexy,  friendly Joan, Alison’s Oberlin college girlfriend. She inspires Corrigan’s exuberant  “I’m Changing My Major [to Joan].” Rounding out the small cast, Robert Hager plays various hunky men that Alison’s father likes.

A small orchestra directed by Micah Young provided a rich accompaniment to the proceedings just before them on the stage.

Bottom Line: Wait until you’re feeling fairly strong before you see it because it may make you think about things you’d just as soon not, such as dysfunctional families, a daughter’s distress, and how the past provides more than enough “revenge” for a memoirist.

Fun Home runs through October 22. For tickets go to playhousesquare.org or call (216) 241-6000

Photo: (From L) Alessandra Baldacchino as 'Small Alison', Pierson Salvador as 'Christian' and Lennon Nate Hammond as 'John' in Fun Home. Photo by Joan Marcus

Review of Twelfth Night at Great Lakes

Twelfth Night @ Great Lakes Theater, Hanna Theatre, Sept. 30-Oct. 30, 2016

Laura Kennelly

There’s plenty of “Wait for it . . .  wait for it” guffaw-worthy comedy in the Great Lakes Theater production of Twelfth Night now playing at the Hanna Theatre. Directed  by Drew Barr, the play seemingly doesn’t miss a chance for obvious farce (and good for that!), but it also delights in romance and unexpected love.

Like all Shakespeare comedies, the plot is ridiculous. Fraternal twins, separated by shipwreck, wash up on an island, but neither knows the other is alive. Meanwhile on that island a Duke pines for a lady who does not pine for him.  The love-struck Duke’s now familiar words open the play and set the tone for this rom-com: “If music be the food of love, play on.”

And play they do--in more than a musical sense. Local laughs come immediately in the first act when twin Viola (the convincing and comely Cassandra Bissell) washes up on a strange island and is told she’s in Illyria. She remarks in surprise “And what should I do in Illyria?” Although even Shakespeare couldn’t have anticipated an extra joke, this reference tickled Elyria residents and the rest of us too.

Viola soon disguises herself as a man to qualify for a position working for Orsino, Duke of Illyria. The Duke (a dashing Juan Rivera Lebron) thinks he loves the wealthy countess Olivia (the scornful, flighty Christine Weber). Olivia, in turn, has eyes for Viola’s twin Sebastian, (Jonathan Christopher MacMillan).

Much of the real comedy (that is, farce) revolves around the interactions between members of Olivia’s circle: her blustering uncle Sir Toby Belch (the now-legendary Aled Davies), her clueless suitor Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Tom Ford), her officious steward Malvolio (Lynn Robert Berg), her jester Feste (M. A. Taylor), and clever servant Fabian (Laura Welsh Berg). All are funny, but Berg’s fearless portrayal of Malvolio’s cluelessness (it involves a drastic change of costume and a yellow corset) takes the comedic cake. They are supported by an engaging ensemble, many of whom may be observed in the background during the play reading books (beach reading for an island setting?)

An especially delightful touch was the music, which indeed did “play on,” thanks to a very tuneful Feste (Taylor), accompanied by a muse (Jillian Kates) floating on a platform above the stage with her electric guitar. Composer Daniel Kluger and Music Director Joel Mercier created a bit of magic there.

Scenic designer Russell Metheny, and costume designer Kim Krumm Sorenson joined by Rick Martin (lighting) and Lee Kinney (sound) created clever sets that required a “double vision” at times.

Bottom Line: While some of the comic elements might be trimmed (it’s a long play), it ended with a wonderful scene which I won’t spoil. We had to wait a long time for the last laugh (hence the “wait for it” above), but the final scene was so worth it. I think the moral must be that love, truly, is indeed blind.

For tickets call Great Lakes Theater at (216) 241-6000

Photo: Ken Blaze

In the Heights @ The Beck Center 2/12-2/28

Hola! Just had a fantastic time. And why not? Upbeat urban family stories told with Latin rhythms. sweet ballads, and sassy hip-hop blended to good effect in the Beck Center/Baldwin Wallace Music Theatre production of In the Heights directed by Victoria Bussert.

This gorgeous, energetic version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 2008 Tony-award-winning debut musical reveals the much-praised Miranda genius now evident in the current Broadway hit Hamilton. Like Hamilton, In the Heights shows how cultural assimilation can be a delicious two-way street.

The action is simple. When the show opens we see Graffiti Pete (a hip Warren Egypt Franklin) spray-painting the audience (or so it seems as a fine mist floats toward us). He stands front and center of a kaleidoscopic view of Washington Heights’ shops, apartments, and bridges. (The scene resembles the Red Grooms mixed media New York cityscape displayed in the Cleveland Museum of Art).

Then, with a whirl of outraged motion, shop owner, Usnavi (lithe, tall, expressive Ellis C. Dawson III) shoos him away and tells us how it is, where he lives, in the barrio.

“Lights up on Washington Heights, up at the break of day/ I wake up and got this little punk I gotta chase away/Pop the grate at the crack of dawn, sing/ While I wipe down the awning/Hey y’all, good morning.” [Take a listen] [http://genius.com/Lin-manuel-miranda-in-the-heights-lyrics]

While the carefully-crafted language doesn’t impede the story or get in the way of the vital score, it does add a level of fascination and challenge. What can I say about a character/ who speaks in meter/ not often heard in theater? You might call it hip-hop, but it’s also old-school couplets (day/away) followed by a tercet or triplet rhyming (sing, awning, morning). All this harkens back to 17th and 18th-century British drama (be still my geeky English major heart!)

Others have their own language beat; they all add up to city melody. There’s Piragua Guy (Matt Lynn) issuing percussive cries to buy piraguas (snow cones), Abuela Claudia (Jessie Cope Miller) whose grandmotherly love proves pivotal.

For young love, there’s Nina (sweet Livvy Marcus) torn between her respect for her parents--impatient father (Jared Leal) and seemingly subservient mother (Kelsey Baehrens)--and her attraction to her father’s employee Benny (Malik Victorian). She’s also obsessed because she lost her scholarship to Stanford so can’t afford to go back. (Quibble: Why $$$ to California? Why not less expensive local places, such as NYU?). Usnavi has problems too, including a crush on the spectacular Vanessa (a gorgeous and queenly Christiana Perrault). She works with Daniela (a firecracker Isabel Plana) and Carla (a ditzy MacKenzie Wright) at the beauty salon next door. And there’s Usnavi’s cousin Sonny (a pesky yet cute Michael Canada) who alternately drives him mad and helps him out.

Dances set by choreographer Gregory Daniels allows everyone to weave around the stage in complex patterns that must require split-second timing as onstage musicians led by music director David Pepin provide catchy beats.

Bottom Line: It’s great musical theatre, memorably done. In the Heights and its subjects--human connection, the power of neighborhoods, universal hopes and dreams--makes bold statements. Maybe Usnavi (Miranda’s alter ego?) is not Homer (“Oh muse, sing in me”) and In the Heights is not really a classical epic, like the Odyssey, but in a way it is. How? It shows in a simple relatable way why and how a place becomes home and how a culture’s strength may lie in finding positive ways to incorporate difference.

Photos: William Taylor Bradford @ Bradford Images