Broadway’s ‘Fun Home’ to Close in September

Following a hit 18-month run that helped expand perceptions of the kind of musical that could make it on Broadway, Fun Home is closing up shop in New York, producers announced Tuesday.

The Tony-winning musical will play its last performance Sept. 10, totaling 26 previews and 582 regular performances by the time the cast take their final bows at the Circle in the Square Theatre.

The production, which is the first Broadway show written entirely by women to win the Tony Award for best musical, will launch its North American tour in Cleveland in October. Stops are planned in more than 40 cities, including Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

“Fun Home has been a small miracle since our first preview at The Public Theater,” producers Kristin Caskey, Mike Isaacson and Barbara Whitman said in a statement. “We’re incredibly proud and grateful that this show has had universal acclaim and such an extended life. We’re thrilled that Fun Home will now head out across the country this fall, and thousands of others will get to experience this truly extraordinary production.”

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Based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, the show drew rave reviews in its premiere run at the Public in fall 2013. Still, many theater pundits wondered about the commercial viability on Broadway of a musical drama about a lesbian cartoonist who grew up around a funeral home and years later seeks to understand what drove her closeted gay father to commit suicide.

However, the production rode its critical acclaim to promising business when it transferred to Broadway in March last year, with demand for tickets increasing once it picked up a tidy handful of five Tonys in June.

In addition to best musical, the show won for Lisa Kron’s book, for the original score by composer Jeanine Tesori and lyricist Kron, for Sam Gold’s direction and for lead actor Michael Cerveris. Those wins no doubt stretched the production’s run by several months.

While Fun Home played to near-capacity houses for most of last year following the Tonys, business has been steadily slipping since the spring, dropping to just 39 percent capacity last week. But the modestly scaled production nonetheless ranks as a Broadway success story, grossing $36.8 million to date, and recouping its initial capitalization of $5.25 million just eight months into its run.

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