Fun Home

Jeanine Tesori (music), Lisa Kron (book, lyrics); based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel

Royal Exchange Company, Concord Theatricals

Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

July 3-Aug 1, 2026; 1hr 40mins - no interval

Clockwise from left: Alex Young (Helen Bechdel), Nigel Harman (Bruce Bechdel), Harriet O’Shea (Small Alison), Reuben Shepherd (John) and Theo Wake (Christian) in Fun Home at the Royal Exchange Theatre. All pics: Johan Persson

This show is special.

To start with, Fun Home is a musical at the Royal Exchange. For a theatre not built for music, tech advancements, insightful arrangement, engineering and imaginative planning have made this not only a possibility but a phenomenon. 

Musicals often start with a bang: with this one there's no overture, no curtain, no song at the outset, this one draws you in quietly, to a world of pictures, secrets and introversion that has you hooked straight away. Designed in the round, the Exchange production brings the show back to its origins, and, as designer Peter Butler tells us in the programme, "you're not looking at it though a frame, you're in it. It's like sharing a secret... almost." Indeed, there are so many secrets to share.

We see the world through the eyes of Alison (Jodie McNee), a 45-year-old graphic novelist, as she uncovers objects and memories from the past, each one initiating a scene from her life; starting in childhood, as she stands at her drawing desk, watching her younger selves and her family, revealing the stories behind the objects and her drawings. Just remembering.

The music is filled to the brim with meaning, colour and light, and leitmotifs that conjure ideas remembered, projections, thoughts, tensions. Jeanine Tesori's score is Sondheim-esque in its emotional complexity, expertly arranged for this production by Matthew Malone. And of course we have to see the band in the room with us as a part of the drama. There's an operatic ambition with a casual vernacular atmosphere; the show is aurally stunning, and almost through-sung. As Alex Young (fantastic as Alison's mum Helen) asserts: "it doesn't worry so much about the rules of musicals. It kind of tells it the way that it has to tell it. That kind of confidence that the piece has, makes it so special."

Lighting (Bethany Gupwell) and set design (Butler) play a crucial part in the immersion, with furniture pieces from the 1970s giving the facade of domestic bliss, the waves of Alison's pencil marks represented in light drawn down from the ceiling. 

And the songs are intense. Highlights include the wonderfully visceral Changing My major to Joan, sung by "Medium" Alison (Alice Audrey O'Hanlon) in her first semester at college, and Ring of Keys, expertly delivered by "Small" Alison (Harriet O'Shea last night) with Alison (McNee).

The child actors are incredible: "Come to the Fun Home" is a radio advertisement by Small Alison and brothers John (Reuben Sheperd) and Christian (Theo Wake) for the family funeral home; a hilarious diversion by the three children, giving an inappropriate, Jackson 5-style groove to the deceased. Dad Bruce (the inimitable Nigel Harman) thinks of course that children should be seen and not heard, but he has his own secrets, and a closeted story that ends in tragedy, highlighting and renewing Alison's tensions. 

The story's so good that I heard one audience member say "it didn't need to be a musical". And yet Tesori does something with the story that turns a novel into sound, and shows us some complexity that would not otherwise be available. As a play it would be good, but as a musical it opens our emotions: makes us laugh and cry in the same sentence.

There's a weaving into action and sound of something that started out, in Bechdel's graphic novel, as purely visual. This thoroughly collaborative affair, directed by Sarah Frankcom. works so intimately in the round at the Exchange that it gives us something truly unique, even an edge of theatrical genius.

More info and tickets here