Peppermint Creek Theatre Produces Tony Award Winning Musical
Lansing, MI – Peppermint Creek Theatre Company is proud to announce the two-week run of the musical, Fun Home, with music by Jeanine Tesori and book and lyrics by Lansing native Lisa Kron, running June 2 - 5 & 9 - 12, 2022.
The 2013 musical is based on Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, a 2006 graphic memoir by American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, author of the comic strip “Dykes to Watch Out For.” Both stage musical and graphic novel chronicle Bechdel’s childhood and youth in rural Pennsylvania, and focus on her complex relationship with her brilliant but enigmatic father while addressing themes of sexual orientation, gender roles, suicide, emotional abuse, dysfunctional family life and the role literature plays in helping people understand themselves and those in their family. The story is related through a series of non-linear vignettes connected by narration provided by the character representing Alison Bechdel as an adult as she looks back on her life.
“A beautiful heartbreaker of a musical. Fun Home isn’t just a coming out story or a coming-of-age story. Its universality comes from its awareness of how we never fully know even those closest to us – and of the undercurrent of grown-up secrets, intuited by children, that exists to some degree in every family. Fun Home finds a shining clarity that lights up the night.” – The New York Times
“The best musical of the year... an emotionally-packed piece of theater, full of joy, heart, sorrow and uncomfortable reality.” – Playbill
In 2009, Obie Award-winning playwright Lisa Kron wrote the book and lyrics and Tony Award-nominated composer Jeanine Tesori created the music for the adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s 2006 “graphic memoir.” The show premiered Off-Broadway in September, 2013 at The Public Theater, where it enjoyed multiple extensions to its run. The production was heralded as “the first mainstream musical about a young lesbian.”
The piece was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical, the Obie Award for Musical Theater, and the Off-Broadway Alliance Award. The Broadway production opened in April, 2015, and earned a dozen nominations for the 69th Tony Awards, winning five Tony Awards, including Best Musical.
The show garnered widespread critical acclaim, including The New York Times’ calling it “a beautiful heartbreaker of a musical” and listing it as one of its top 15 shows of 2013. The New York Daily News called Fun Home “achingly beautiful,” saying that it “speaks to one family and all families torn by secrets and lies”. The New York Times music critic, Anthony Tommasini, praised the show’s score as “a masterpiece” that contains “Sondheim-influenced songs that unfold over insistent rhythmic figures and shifting, rich harmonies” and calling the show “complex yet texturally transparent” and “engrossingly dramatic.”
Helming Peppermint Creek’s production of this innovative slice of musical theater is Mary Job, known for some of Peppermint Creek Theater’s most recent stunning productions of Indecent and Eurydice. Starring in PCTC’s production as grown up Alison is Abigail English, and Matt Eldred as Alison’s father, Bruce.
NOTE: Fun Home contains adult language, themes and content. Not recommended for those under the age of 13.
The production will take place at Central United Methodist Church, 215 N. Capitol Ave, Lansing MI 48933. The show will run Thursday, June 2 – Sunday, June 5, and Thursday, June 9 – Sunday, June 12, 2022. Show times are Thursday through Saturday at 8pm, and Sundays at 2pm. Tickets can be ordered online at www.peppermintcreek.org, and are $20 general admission, and $15 for students/seniors 65+/military.
This production is generously underwritten by Foster Swift Collins and Smith, and Joan & Jerry Mattson.
To purchase tickets, visit www.peppermintcreek.org. Follow “PCTC” on Facebook. Press photos are available on request.
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