Fun Home’s central character is cartoonist Alison Bechdel, played by three actors at three ages, and the show revolves around her father, Bruce, a meticulous, closeted English teacher who runs the family funeral home. Around them are Alison’s mother, Helen, her brothers, Christian and John, and Joan, her first girlfriend.
Content note: Fun Home deals with coming out, a closeted parent who had relationships with underage boys, and a death the memoir treats as a probable suicide. We describe the story plainly but without graphic detail.
The musical has music by Jeanine Tesori and book and lyrics by Lisa Kron, adapted from Bechdel’s 2006 graphic memoir. It premiered at the Public Theater in 2013 and opened on Broadway at Circle in the Square on April 19, 2015, where it won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical (IBDB, Playbill). London first saw it at the Young Vic in 2018. Here is everyone in the family, the songs that define them and why such a small cast lands so hard. For every number in order, see our Fun Home songs explained guide.
| Character | Who they are | Key songs |
|---|---|---|
| Alison | The adult cartoonist, 43, narrating and drawing | “Maps,” “Telephone Wire” |
| Medium Alison | Alison at 19, in college | “Changing My Major” |
| Small Alison | Alison as a child of about 10 | “Ring of Keys” |
| Bruce Bechdel | Her father, English teacher and funeral director | “Edges of the World,” “Pony Girl” |
| Helen Bechdel | Her mother | “Days and Days,” “Helen’s Etude” |
| Christian and John | Her brothers | “Come to the Fun Home” |
| Joan | Medium Alison’s first girlfriend | “Changing My Major” (as its subject) |
| Roy | One actor playing several young men in Bruce’s life | “Raincoat of Love” |
Why are there three Alisons in Fun Home?
Because memory doesn’t come in one size. Adult Alison, at 43, is at her drawing table trying to make sense of her father, and Medium Alison and Small Alison are the memories she is drawing. All three can share the stage, so a single scene can cut from childhood to college to the present, and the grown-up can watch herself fail to understand something she now understands too well.
Each Alison has her own arc. Small Alison is about noticing: in “Ring of Keys,” she sees a butch delivery woman walk into a diner and recognizes herself before she has words for it. Medium Alison is about saying it out loud: “Changing My Major” is her giddy, terrified morning after her first night with Joan. Alison is about what it cost: her solo “Maps” works out how small her father’s world really was. They sing together only in the final “Flying Away.” Our guides to Ring of Keys and Changing My Major go line by line.
Who is Bruce Bechdel?
Bruce is the show’s great, unresolved problem. He teaches English, runs the family funeral home and spends his spare hours restoring the Victorian house on Maple Avenue to a standard nobody else can meet. He is charming, cultured and capable of real tenderness, as in the lullaby “Pony Girl,” and he is also controlling and frightening, ordering Small Alison into a dress she hates.
He is a closeted gay man who has secret relationships with men, including underage boys, and the musical doesn’t soften that. One of them is Roy, a young man hired to do yard work, and Bruce is later arrested over an encounter with a minor. His daughter’s coming out by letter, which should be a door opening between them, only seems to tighten the walls around him.
In the memoir, Bruce died after being hit by a truck four months after Alison came out. The evidence is unclear, but Bechdel concludes he took his own life. In the musical, his unravelling comes in “Edges of the World,” which ends as he steps into the road. Michael Cerveris won the Tony for Best Actor in a Musical for the role, and it is easy to see why: the part asks for a man you can neither forgive nor stop trying to understand.
Who are Helen, Christian and John?
Helen is Alison’s mother, and for most of the evening she seems to be in the background, keeping the house to Bruce’s standards and practising piano upstairs while he seduces Roy in the library below. That scene, “Helen’s Etude,” shows how much she has trained herself not to see.
Then, late in the show, she gets “Days and Days.” Helen tells Medium Alison what the marriage has really been like, and urges her daughter not to give her own days away the same way. It reframes everything she has done up to that point, and it is one of the score’s most devastating songs. Read more in our post on “Days and Days” from Fun Home.
Christian and John are Alison’s brothers. Their big moment is “Come to the Fun Home,” an imaginary TV commercial for the funeral home that the kids perform with Small Alison at the funeral home. It’s the funniest number in the show, and it lets you see how ordinary childhood carried on inside a very strange house.
Want to play these songs yourself? Helen actually plays piano on stage in “Helen’s Etude,” and Jeanine Tesori’s score is full of piano-led songs, from “Ring of Keys” to “Days and Days,” that sound lovely from a simple chord chart. Try Pianoforall.
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Who is Joan, and why does she matter?
Joan is the confident young lesbian Medium Alison meets at college after hesitating outside the door of the Gay Union. She becomes Alison’s first girlfriend, and she’s the reason for “Changing My Major.”
Joan matters because she is the one person in the story who is entirely at ease with who she is. She kisses Alison through her doubts about the coming-out letter, and when the two visit the Bechdel home together, she sees the family from outside. In a show full of closets, Joan is an open door, and the contrast with Bruce is the point.
How do the characters come from Alison Bechdel’s memoir?
Every main character is a real person from Bechdel’s 2006 graphic memoir of the same name, about growing up in small-town Pennsylvania with a father who ran a funeral home, nicknamed the “Fun Home.” Bechdel did not take part in writing the musical; Kron and Tesori built the stage version from the book.
Their biggest invention is the three Alisons. On the page, an adult narrator looks back over drawn panels; on stage, Kron and Tesori split her into three actors so we can see the panels and the person drawing them at once. Some characters are compressed too: the several young men in Bruce’s life are played by one actor. When the show moved to Broadway, it was restaged in the round at Circle in the Square, which put the family’s house in the middle of the audience. For more on why the show feels so personal, read our Fun Home: ode to family overview. If raw, intimate musicals are your thing, our guide to musicals like Rent has more to try.
Frequently asked questions
Who is the main character in Fun Home?
Alison Bechdel is the main character, played by three actors: Small Alison as a child, Medium Alison in college and adult Alison, a 43-year-old cartoonist who narrates. Her father, Bruce, is the person the story circles. The show is her attempt to understand him, told through her memories of growing up.
Why are there three Alisons in Fun Home?
The three Alisons let the show move between memory and the present. Adult Alison is drawing her life, while Small Alison and Medium Alison act out the memories she is drawing. They can share the stage, comment on each other and, in the finale “Flying Away,” finally sing together.
Who sings “Ring of Keys” in Fun Home?
Small Alison sings “Ring of Keys.” In a diner with her father, she sees a butch delivery woman and recognizes something of herself for the first time, though she doesn’t yet have the words. It became the show’s breakout song when Sydney Lucas, the original Small Alison, sang it on the 2015 Tony Awards broadcast.
Is Fun Home a true story?
Yes. Fun Home is adapted from Alison Bechdel’s 2006 graphic memoir about her childhood, her coming out and her relationship with her closeted father, Bruce, who died four months after she came out. Bechdel concluded that his death was suicide, though the evidence was unclear. She was not involved in writing the musical.
Did Fun Home win the Tony for Best Musical?
Yes. Fun Home won five Tony Awards in 2015, including Best Musical, Best Book, Best Original Score, Best Direction and Best Actor for Michael Cerveris as Bruce. Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron became the first all-female writing team to win the Tony for Best Original Score.
