I went to the fun home! - West End Wilma

Ever since hearing the cast recording of the Broadway musical Fun Home, I have been eagerly anticipating it coming to London – and now it has! The show, which is playing to mostly sold out crowds at the Young Vic Theatre tells the story of a girl coming to terms with her fathers suicide and looking back on her life to see whether it was her fault for being gay and shaming him as a father – or because he turned out gay himself, having affairs behind his wife’s back.

The music to this show is what has always grabbed me. From the upbeat ‘Come To The Fun Home’ to the hilarious ‘Changing My Major’ and the heart wrenching ‘Days and Days’, there is a brilliant mix of styles which makes the 100 minute show (without interval) fly by.

I found it odd that in the show, the family run a funeral home (fun home) and this is made hugely prominent at the beginning of the show but then completely swept aside and never mentioned again for the rest of the show. Also, the man playing the dad (I can’t find a press release or cast listing online) sounded a lot like the killer in The Silence of the Lambs which I found off-putting but I imagine I was the only one picturing him eating butterflies during the show.

I was lucky enough to bag myself a ‘Lucky Dip’ ticket to Fun Home for just £10 (a certain number of these went on sale for each show). This means that when you arrive at the show, you are asked to wait at the side of the auditorium until just before the start of the show, when an usher will allocate you any seats that aren’t being used (people who didn’t turn up etc). This does mean that there is a chance you will have to stand at the back if no seats are available but for such a low ticket price I really didn’t care. Luckily I was given a seat right in the middle of the auditorium about ten rows back which was a great view. Sadly, I was sat in the middle of a Youth Group with twenty or so children that couldn’t have been more than eight years old and who had no interest in watching the show and just giggled any time being gay was mentioned. I’ll save the details about that for a separate blog but it did unfortunately ruin the show for me. Having only paid £10 though, I couldn’t complain too much!

Beautiful, poignant and heart breaking, Fun Home deserves a West End transfer, if for no other reason than I want to see it again! So if someone could make that happen that would be great, thanks!

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