REVIEW: Royal Exchange’s Fun Home offers a tender, exquisitely observed exploration of identity and belonging

Running throughout the month under the direction of Sarah Frankcom, Fun Home takes over the Royal Exchange with the measured assurance of a modern classic.

Adapted from Alison Bechdel’s celebrated graphic memoir, the five-time Tony Award-winning musical charts the cartoonist’s childhood, adolescence and adulthood simultaneously, weaving memories of family life, first love and long-buried grief into an intimate, funny and profoundly moving portrait of identity.

Fun Home unfolds as a collage of recollections, with three performers sharing the role of Alison as she pieces together the story of an emotionally elusive father who lives a clandestine life as a gay man. Where many other plays of as many moving parts swiftly become a convoluted challenge for the audience, the shifting timeline flows with remarkable clarity, aided by Frankcom’s elegant in-the-round staging and Peter Butler’s restrained design, while Jeanine Tesori’s tender yet glorious score moves effortlessly between buoyant comedy and aching introspection.

Jodie McNee brings expertly judged warmth and insight to the adult Alison – an omnipotent narrator guiding the audience through memories of her sexual awakening that are by turns joyful, awkward and devastating – while Alice Audrey O’Hanlon is irresistibly charming as the exuberant student Alison, capturing the excitement and uncertainty of first love with infectious sincerity. Harriet O’Shea, along with two other staggeringly talented child actors, delivers an exceptional performance with the naturalism of a West End veteran. Thoughtful and topical without slipping into precociousness, the trio imbue every scene with curiosity, vulnerability and precision, bringing a set of breathtaking vocal turns that steal the show.

Opposite them, decorated actor Nigel Harman gives Bruce Bechdel extraordinary depth, balancing charisma, fatherly duty and the simmering volatility of long-held torment without reducing the character to cliched villainy or victimhood. His portrait of a man crushed beneath secrecy is deeply affecting, while Alex Young is heartbreakingly superb as Bruce’s beset wife Helen, conveying years of compromise and endurance with agonising resonance.

Despite its setting in a funeral home and the shadow of inevitable tragedy, Fun Home sustains a life-affirming message of optimism. The exuberant Come to the Fun Home brims with irreverent humour, while Tesori’s score repeatedly punctures melancholy with compassion, wit and several moments of overwhelming exhilaration.

Beautifully judged from beginning to end, Fun Home finds extraordinary emotional power in memory, contradiction and the untidy nuances of repression, resulting in a musical that feels both intimate and universal.

Fun Home runs at the Royal Exchange until Sat 1 Aug – book your tickets below.