Fun Home ****

Since I first saw this musical adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s revered graphic novel in an early preview at the Public Theater in 2013, it has improved dramatically. Lisa Kron’s book now seems tighter and more coherent and Jeanine Tesori’s songs seem better integrated into the action. Sam Gold has skillfully reworked the staging to play to the audience on all four sides of Circle in the Square’s awkward rectangular stage. David Zinn’s wonderful set has been fitted out with multiple trapdoors that whisk furniture out of sight and back in a flash and his costumes are evocative. The Bechdel family lives in the funeral home that barely closeted father Bruce (the always compelling Michael Cerveris) has inherited. He is much more interested in restoring the home and entertaining handsome young men than in attending to his wife Helen (the wonderful Judy Kuhn). His daughter Alison comes out as a lesbian at college. Her hopes for a closer relationship with her father are thwarted. Alison is played by three fine actresses — Sydney Lucas as a child, Emily Skeggs as a college freshman, and Beth Malone as the 43-year-old cartoonist who is telling the story. Lucas has shot up a bit in two years, which puts a slightly different spin on her role. Skeggs is not quite as good as her predecessor Alexandra Socha, but good enough. Malone seemed more engaged this time out. She is still so thin that I feared for her health, but that’s my problem. Roberta Colindrez is fine as Joan, Alison’s first lover, and Joel Perez is good as several young men Bruce fancies. As at the Public, the audience was primed to enjoy the play no matter what. Fortunately their enthusiasm was deserved. Running time: one hour, 40 minutes; no intermission.

And I and Silence **

Naomi Wallace, a playwright in residence at Signature Theatre this season, has a most impressive resume. It includes a MacArthur Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, an Obie Award, the 2012 Horton Foote Prize and the 2013 Windham Campbell prize for drama. I wish I could say that the reasons for all her honors were more evident in her new drama now in previews at Signature. The action follows the story of two young women both as teenagers in prison in 1950 and as roommates nine years later. Scenes of their hardships in the outside world are juxtaposed with scenes of their budding friendship in prison. Many of the prison scenes involve Young Jamie (Trae Harris), who is black, coaching Young Dee (Emily Skeggs), who is white, how to be a proper servant, the career they look forward to pursuing after prison. Part of the lessons involve learning where to establish lines that must not be crossed in dealings with their future employers. After prison Jamie (Rachel Nicks) and Dee (Samantha Soule) are living in abject poverty, struggling to find and hold jobs as servants. The disconnect between their personalities in prison and later is exacerbated by the lack of physical resemblance between the two actors playing them. Skeggs’s body type is so different from Soule’s that it is a stretch to accept the two as the same character at different ages. The reasons for their desperation are not made sufficiently clear. The sudden explosion of repressed lesbianism took me by surprise. The actors invest their roles with sincerity and energy. The spartan set by Rachel Hauck is effective, as are Cliff Ramos’s costumes. With the audience split into two facing sides, director Caitlin McLeod needs to work harder to insure that fewer lines are lost when the actors are facing away. It all seemed like a mash-up of “Girls in Prison” and “Thelma and Louise” with a touch of “The Maids” thrown in. I hope that Wallace’s remaining two plays will deliver more evidence of her talents. In case you were wondering, the title is a line from an Emily Dickinson poem. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.