I’ll start with “astonishing”: FUN HOME presented by The Huntington is a production I will never forget. I have always liked this Tony Award-winning musical, but it revealed itself here in all of its humanity and power. This production of FUN HOME stars an astonishing

young performer who brought the house down more than once with her utter aliveness onstage, the expressiveness of her vocals, and her palpable embrace of this character: Lyla Randall plays the youngest incarnation of author and graphic novelist Alison Bechdel as she struggles to understand and write a memoir growing up in their family “fun” home –short for “funeral” home– on Maple Avenue. Indeed, dad allows young Alison a glimpse of that sobering reality when he beckons her to his “work space” and she sees a dead body on his table. Talk about a real-life, working metaphor for buried family secrets.

In the opening minutes, the adult Alison who acts as narrator, stands back and goes on to summarize: “My father was gay. I’m gay. He killed himself, and I grew up to be a lesbian cartoonist.” This of course gets a laugh, but beneath the humor is one woman’s look back at of some of her life’s absurd juxtapositions: she and her sibs playing in coffins and making a commercial for their “FUN HOME.” Sudden rage erupting from a warm father/daughter moment. A frilly dress causing anguish while the sight of an adult female stranger in jeans with a ring of keys on her belt evokes the thrill of recognition– and one of the most gorgeous songs in the show.

Bechdel’s acute observations of growing up and coming into herself are captured by Lisa Kron’s illuminating book and lyrics, coupled with Jeanine Tesori’s funny/poignant score. Three different actresses play Bechdel at three stages of her life: childhood embodied by the aforementioned stand out Lyla Randall; college coming-out years starring the hilariously ambivalent Maya Jacobson opposite Sushma Saha,  lushly alluring as Alison’s first lust interest, JOAN; adulthhood where Sarah Bockel stars as the grownup Alison, looking on and reacting to her earlier selves, breaking through and putting the pieces together. These three interact over a fulsome 90 minutes as the orchestra hovers, elegantly letterboxed above the action, on spare, beautifully appointed sets and lighting (Tanya Orellana/Philip Rosenberg) flying in and out below.

The ensemble is perfect, especially Nick Duckart as Bechdel’s father Bruce, a brilliant, controlling, bursting at the seams gay man whose outer world cannot contain the reaches of his inner life. Jennifer Ellis as Bechdel’s mother Helen has never been more compelling than she is here as a woman wrung out from the strain of keeping her family together and the lie that is her marriage.

This splendid show makes clear that Bechdel’s very specific odyssey to know herself as a gay woman and be clearly seen–reflects the universal struggle to realize and freely be whoever we are. Logan Ellis’s direction crystallizes something tricky to capture- the vivid way in which our pasts live in the present. FUN HOME nails the way children make simple sense of the inscrutable and scary adult world around them, followed by the sudden epiphanies which can break through– if we are alert– and carry us forward with an appreciation for those who shaped us, as they themselves were shaped and struggled in kind.

The audience leapt to its feet not wanting to let go this miracle of a production, with its splendid cast and crew who brought this tale of becoming so vividly to life with enormous compassion for all of us whoever we may be. I left wondering what planet young Lyla Randall was from, where she got all she brings to the stage, and where she will go from here. MUST SEE THIS! At The Huntington Theater through December 14!

Photo/Matthew Murphy

HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD now onstage at the Emerson Colonial Theatre is a tale of two experiences. As Dickens said, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” Indeed, the show hinges on stagecraft approaching witchcraft, bedazzling us with some of the most SUPERnatural effects I have ever seen at the theater! There are fire-flashing wands; characters disappearing into bookcases, fireplaces, and a coin slot in a phone box. There’s levitation while fighting, and morphing into other characters right before our very eyes! And time-travel sequences which rattle our seats and ripple the set as clocks spin– and I swore the earth was moving!

The magic happens out of the gate and keeps up throughout 2 hours and 50 minutes of a plot it would take a wizard– or someone who’d more recently read the books– to follow. Luckily, I was accompanied by my daughter to whom my husband and I read every word of every one of J.K. Rowlings 7 volumes aloud.

Photo/Matthew Murphy

This overlong, densely overwritten show stars next-gen Harry Potter characters: Harry Potter’s son Albus and Draco Malfoy’s son Scorpius, two misfits (cursed children?) laboring under the complex legacies and outsized personas of their respective parents. Their blossoming relationship is the crux (as distinguished from horcrux) of the proceedings which hinges on our recalling the intricate history of events swirling around scores of characters, their personalities, powers, and extended Potter, Weasley, and Diggory families (could have done without Delphi Diggory, but then there goes Act II), along with the fantastical Hogwarts faculty including Snape, McGonagall and Umbridge, plus random picaresques Bellatrix Lestrange and my favorite Moaning Myrtle, topped off by Dumbledore and Voldemort. Whew.

Then, when someone gets hold of a “Time-Turner”(fabulous onstage prestidigitation!) time travel ensues and we are hurled into a blur of alternate universes which I muddled through, straining to hear and keep up. The printed page gave room over time to develop the coming-of-age issues propelling all the action. Here, these characters and themes amount to cursory sketches with no time to prepare or care– which I didn’t when we finally skidded into a stunted ending. At the EMERSON COLONIAL THEATRE through December 20.