Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...“Fun Home," which packs more lessons for life into 90 minutes than some teachers manage in their entire careers, is about something more than growing up gay in a funeral home, as complex as that might be. It’s a meditation on the role of chance in our lives. Throughout the piece, Alison always is asking some version of the question of why her dad grew up gay and killed himself and yet she grew in the same home, with its funereal way of making a living, and became a mostly happy lesbian cartoonist."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...Inspired by Alison Bechdel’s best-selling graphic memoir — and featuring impassioned, almost operatic music by Tesori and lyrics by Lisa Kron that possess the depth and specificity of the finest novel writer —”Fun Home” is a devastating tale of family dysfunction. But it also is an homage to the possibility that art and time can bring both understanding and forgiveness, perhaps even a degree of happiness."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...After incarnations on Broadway and in a touring production that stopped here last year, the musical based on Alison Bechdel's autobiographical graphic novel gets a locally sourced staging under the expert direction of Gary Griffin."
Stage and Cinema - Highly Recommended
"...Fun Home has many hinges: before and after, if or when, then and now, and, above all, three Alisons both for and against less than one Bruce. Our sympathies get fought over (and over), which only tells you how much truth-telling is at stake here. Griffin makes every moment matter, while Doug Peck’s musical direction triggers the novelistic texture of Kron’s supple lyrics and Tesori’s vaulting melodies. This may not be fun but it sure is home."
Around The Town Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...Griffin has put together an amazing cast to bring Bechdel’s life to audiences. The book and lyrics by Lisa Kron and the music by Jeanine Tesori, brings the graphic novel written by Alison Bechdel to greater heights. While the songs in this play are not ones that one will recall later, they propel the powerful story of a young girl finding her identity with amazing clarity. Alison (played in this version by Chicago favorite Danni Smith, who is even more amazing than I expected) is onstage during the entire play, serving as our narrator as she tells about her life from childhood through today and attempts to unravel the mysteries that helped to create the woman she is today!"
Chicago Theatre Review - Highly Recommended
"...Ultimately, it’s a wonderful thing that “Fun Home” is playing until Nov. 12, because chances are very high that I’ll be seeing it again. The Chicago theater scene is fortunate to see many wonderful musicals hit its stages, but it’s rare for a musical as completely fulfilling as “Fun Home” to arrive, and theatergoers should seize this opportunity to see a top-notch, exquisitely realized example of what the medium is capable of."
Chicagoland Musical Theatre - Highly Recommended
"...Victory Gardens Theater’s flawless production of lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel‘s memoir musical Fun Home is superior to the New York production that earned this show the 2015 Best Musical Tony."
Third Coast Review - Highly Recommended
"...With a soaring soundtrack, powerful performances, and one of the best books of a musical in recent memory, Fun Home is a touching exploration of familial and personal identity. For those that may have seen the show on its Broadway tour, fear not: this production is surely worth the price of admission, a carefully crafted showcase of the clear areas where Chicago theater triumphs."
The Hawk Chicago - Recommended
"...the play’s ultimate effect is one compounded with laughter, tears, and inspiration. To say the things we feel while we can. To avoid judgment and seek understanding. To speak our truths, to ourselves and to other people."
Chicago Theater and Arts - Highly Recommended
"...A plethora of emotional family issues from parent/child relationships and sibling interactions to growing up, coming out, and leaving one's family on several level, sets the stage for 'Fun Home' at the Victory Gardens Theater."
Chicago On Stage - Highly Recommended
"...The Victory Garden's brilliant, somewhat minimalist production of Alison Bechdel's Tony Award-winning "Fun Home" leaves just about no emotional leaves unturned as it twists its way through its ninety-minute runtime, grabbing the viewer's heart and never letting go."
Rebellious Magazine For Women - Somewhat Recommended
"...The play is inspired by Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir, but her visuals are lost in theatrical translation. No matter how stylish and seamless Yu Shibagaki's set is, the stage begs for projected images of the main character's drawings. Without those, "Fun Home" feels incomplete, despite the praise and accolades. That's not to say its glowing coverage is a complete case of "The Emperor's New Clothes," more like the material has a few holes. Still, viewers with similar experiences will find comfort in it."
Picture This Post - Highly Recommended
"...The genius of Victory Garden’s Fun Home is in this very specificity. It is an odd story… one never before told with lots of quirks that makes it so universally appealing. It may have an unmistakable queer sensibility, but any one who has birthed and raised a child; any one who has known the mystery of first attraction; any one who has suffered the pain of lost desire and yearned for more will find Fun Home delivers a moving rendition of the experience of being fully human."