Fun Home at Circle in the Square? Meh

For those who don't know, Fun Home won the Tony Award for Best Musical this past Sunday evening.  My feelings?  Meh.  Fun Home is a small, intimate, lesbian / gay musical and gays and lesbians are jumping for joy.  I have, of course, no problem with they gay and lesbian bit, what I'm not excited about is the fact that this show is "small" and "intimate."  Oh, and then there's the fact that it's on Broadway where things need to be big and brassy, a place where intimate shows have a fairly poor success rate.  Now I know there are those who will say "but it's playing at Circle in Square, that'll make a big difference."  For those who don't know, for every performance of Fun Home, there are 776 seats available.  Think about that.  That's a lot of people.  In my opinion that sort of drubs the intimacy rating.

The entire cast of Fun Home

I read in the NYT this morning how the producers of the show were ecstatic because ticket sales skyrocketed after the win.  Well, that always happens - nothing new there.  Oh, and if you happen to want to go see this "small, intimate" show you're going to need to shell out over $150 for one of the cheap seats.  Now that's not very intimate, is it?  If you really want to get up close and personal it's going to set you back about $280 a seat.  And just think, you'll be sharing those intimate moments with 700 plus other people.

My advice to you is that if you have any interest in seeing Fun Home, wait.  I suspect that when their lease runs out, probably in about a year, the show will move back Off-Broadway from whence it came.  There, in a theater that truly is small and intimate, I wouldn't be surprised if this show runs for years, and years, and years.