The bartender at the Copley Theatre bar gave us a heads up: “You’re heading to cry,” he warned. “The exhibit is that impressive.”

I nodded, anxious to see for myself if “Fun House,” the musical that just opened in the freshly-renovated Copley Theatre in Aurora as variety 3 in the Paramount’s inaugural 4-show Daring Sequence, lived up to the buzz.

I knew that “Fun Dwelling,” dependent on the graphic novel memoirs of Alison Bechdel about coming to conditions with her lesbian sexuality and her romance with her closeted gay father, had won a lot of awards, which include 5 Tony’s, 1 for Very best Musical of 2015.

And this Paramount Theatre output, co-directed by Jim Corti and Landree Fleming, is hitting all the appropriate notes with other critics, which includes the Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones, who not only gave it four stars but explained it as accomplishing “a amount of emotional depth I have by no means viewed in advance of with this piece,” although heaping praise on Corti as “far and absent Chicago’s most attained director of musicals.”

Right up until it came to downtown Aurora, on the other hand, I’d in no way heard of this musical. And I’d not yet browse a single evaluation when my husband and I went to see Thursday’s performance. So the bartender’s unsolicited reviews were the 1st indicator this show would very likely pack some psychological wallop.

Because this was the second show I’d witnessed of the Bold Collection, I was familiar with the benefits of seeing a a lot more personal Paramount generation at the Copley Theatre that showcased the phase just a couple ft absent and with actors accomplishing, at occasions, in the aisle upcoming to your seat.

With “Fun Home” the audience not only gets to be “up near and own in that house,” states Corti, “we get to go inside Alison’s psyche as section of an investigation into the truth of the matter about who she is and who her father was.”

Certainly. I discovered myself swiftly drawn into the storyline, but also approximately mesmerized by the folks on stage – not just the characters but the actors who so brilliantly introduced them to daily life.

That was in particular true of Emilie Modaff, who I’d watch thoroughly even following she’d receded to the sidelines while other folks…