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| It's all fun and games until Michael Cerveris makes you cry. |
This past Saturday, I took a friend to see “Fun Home” at the
Public Theatre. It’s based on Alison Bechdel’s comic book, about growing up in
a funeral home, discovering she was a lesbian and, around the same time,
finding out that her father had been secretly gay. It was alternatively heavy
and hilarious stuff, the kind of things that make people with daddy issues cry.
Michael Cerveris played Alison’s father and gave one of the most nuanced
performance I had ever seen on the stage. It was a performance that was all
subtext. Here was a man that had lived in the closet his entire life, and could
only step a foot out of it when he thought no one else was looking. He was both
an attentive father and a dismissive one, who both saw things and didn’t see
them. It was masterful, where you could see a glimpse of the real man
underneath but you had to first wade through all of the surface in his
character.
It was one of those times where I was really happy to have
been there, to say, “I saw that and it was awesome!”
Whenever people talk about live performances, they talk
about how nothing can replicate it, how TV and film can’t compare to being in a
room and sharing the same space with both performers and the other audience
member in the room. How the sense of community both informs and enriches the
viewing experience.
I think they’re wrong.
