'Fun Home' at the Young Vic

Last week we went to see 'Fun Home' at the Young Vic, a new musical that won loads of awards on Broadway and has opened for a short run here. It's a rather strange tale based on a comic book of the author drawing her life story in comic form to help her come to terms with her family, who she is and her relationship with her dead father. She's a lesbian who only finds out that her dad is gay after she comes out to her family after going away to college.

The play opens with Alison wandering onto the stage to start plotting out the next instalment of her comic and that's when the flashbacks start and we're introduced to her younger self, her father and mother and two brothers. That sets the format for the play, with lots of flashbacks to different episodes of her life to try to shed light on what was really happening. We see three versions of Alison that I've categorised as eight years old, 18 years old and 28 years old.

Her mother and father are both teachers and the father doubles as the local funeral director (hence the title of the play). We gradually learn more about the father as he chats up former students to have sex with them and, on a trip to New York, leaves his children asleep in the hotel room so he can go out cruising. We learn little about her mother until near the end when she reveals her suffering over the years, coping with the police getting involved with her husband, her shame and loneliness, knowing that she's the optional extra in his life.

It's a musical so there's a song for every scene and the whole cast sing at different points. The three children perform a Jackson 5-esque song while playing around a funeral casket and the eight year old Alison sings a 'coming out' song after seeing a butch lesbian in a diner. One of my favourite songs was sung by student Alison after having sex with her new girlfriend for the first time, and how she tells us that her dissertation is going to be about her spine so she can examine it in detail and often. Young love, eh?

The main characters were the three Alisons and the father and I thought all the Alisons were very good - Harriet Turnbull as young Alison, Eleanor Kane as the student and Kaisa Hammerlund as the adult. The father was rather unsympathetic and charmless and played by Zubin Varla who was OK but didn't bring anything to the role to make him a bit more likeable. The mother was played by Jenna Russell whose only solo song was towards the end of the play when she explained her unhappiness to Alison while explaining that her dad was gay. It was really touching. Also a little shout out to Cherrelle Skeete as student Alison's girlfriend.

It's an interesting play and it was nice to hear the audience reaction at times as they recognised or related to some of the scenes. I'm very pleased that I've seen it but I can't actually remember any of the songs or have any great wish to see it again. Sometimes when I leave the theatre I know I want a second viewing but I was happy with one viewing of this play. It didn't really touch me and there was a hint of the 'sad life of the gay man' about it, the usual stereotype. On the other hand, realising - or rather admitting - that she was lesbian was a release for Alison, which was far more positive. Good on the Young Vic for putting this on. 

'Dara' at the National Theatre

We went to see the new production of 'Dara' at the National Theatre last week, a new play about the struggle for the throne of the Mughal empire in northern India in the mid-1600s. Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal for his wife Mumtaz Mahal and it's their sons, Dara and Aurangzeb, who contend for the throne while their father is still alive. I'm familiar with the name of Aurangzeb from my travels round northern India - and particularly around Delhi and Agra - in the '90s, but I've never heard of his older brother Dara before. Apparently he's still a respected Sufi poet in India but it shows how the victor writes the history books.

The play is from Pakistan and was first performed in Lahore in 2010. It was written by Shahid Nadeem and adapted for this production by Tanya Ronder. Shahid has campaigned through his writing for human rights and justice in Pakistan and it's quite interesting that this play has come here with the arguments about the nature of Islam, Sufi and Hindu and with Aurangzeb's hardline  Muslim beliefs versus his brother's idealistic Sufism and poetry.

Here we have a very declamatory play with set speeches and set pieces and family conflicts versus the state, inter-family squabbling and revenge and the fate of nations depending on a few people at the top. It was rather Shakespearean in it's reach. One reason to take so long to blog about it is that I'm still not sure what I thought of the play. Do I like it or do I appreciate it? It's certainly worth seeing and is getting great reviews but I'm still in two minds.

The play opens with Dara and his son seeking sanctuary at the edge of the empire, being chased by Aurangzeb's army but he's betrayed and handed over to his brother's army. We get flashbacks to see where this enmity might have originated, back to when a Sufi mystic singled out Aurangzeb as the threat to his father's throne - would that threat happen anyway or did this cause it? This cumulates in a lengthy court scene at which Dara is accused of apostasy and questioned about wearing a Christian cross round his neck and a ring with a Hindu inscription as well as his Sufi ways and symbols. Will he be found guilty and executed or banished?

We see more of Aurangzeb's past and his love for a Hindu dancing girl who asks him to drink wine against his principles and he goes to do so for his love of her but she removes the glass so he doesn't have to. It was a test to see whether he would, not see him drink. He was willing to bend his principles for love so what made him so harsh and unyielding in later life? Probably lots of things, and probably ordering his brother's beheading which comes back to haunt him.

I thought it was an excellent production and the set was just right, largely bare but with corners of the stage filled with Mughal arches and lattice screens sliding across the stage as the scenes changed, creating intricate patterns of light. The light was dramatic throughout, almost a character in its own right. Zubin Varla as Dara and Sargon Yelda as Aurangzeb were great as the lead characters, with a large cast around them to bounce off.

But did I enjoy it?