Reviews for Fun Home

LA Times – Charles McNulty

Petkoff, rising to the challenge of the show’s most difficult role, bravely doesn’t try to sweeten Bruce’s volatile temperament… Petkoff traces the deterioration in Bruce so convincingly that we can’t help maintaining some sympathy for a man whose life is like a crumbling house quickly falling beyond repair.

Hollywood Reporter – Jordan Riefe

As the tortured Bruce, Petkoff inherits the play’s most difficult role… a man struggling within the confines of a lifestyle that doesn’t fit him…. Petkoff keeps the character sympathetic despite the fact that he’s occasionally downright nasty, taking out his frustration on his family. He never wallows in self-pity, even as his cage consumes him. In the end, he goes out strong, bringing unbridled pathos to the finale, “Flying Away.”

Chicago Theatre Review – Colin Douglas

As Bruce, Broadway actor Robert Petkoff is sensational. Known primarily for his work in Shakespearean works, Mr. Petkoff’s first musical role was actually at Chicago Shakespeare in the title role of Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park with George.” Once again this terrific actor floats his mellifluous voice over a Chicago audience, this time translating Tesori’s lovely score, bringing all the agony and frustration a husband and father must feel when his genes unexpectedly throw him a curveball. Petkoff’s tragic portrayal is brimming with petulance, pain and sheer panic.

Chicago Sun Times – Hedy Weiss

Bruce (Robert Petkoff, ideally tempestuous and often creepy, who gives a fervent rendering of his big anthem, “Edges of the World”), committed suicide by walking into traffic.

Washington Post – Peter Marks

Robert Petkoff gives an invigorating, unsentimental performance.

Boston- WBUR- Carolyn Clay

Broadway vet Robert Petkoff gets to the dual nature of the troubled, tyrannical paterfamilias without turning him into a Jekyll-and-Hyde. Ricocheting between aestheticism and desire, he both treasures and takes his frustrations out on his family. Alternately angry and avuncular, Petkoff sings with clear, graceful ease — until, faced by his questioning daughter and that oncoming truck, he lets loose with a frenzied, fragmenting aria worthy of Sweeney Todd.

Opening Night SF – Jay Barmann

As Alison’s antiques-obsessed, high school English teacher/undertaker dad, Bruce, Broadway vet Robert Petkoff is a powerful presence, and Petkoff interprets this difficult, unlikable character with the appropriate balance of empathy and confused rage.

Tampa Herald Tribune – Jay Handelman

Petkoff is fascinating to watch (and wonderful to hear singing) as Bruce struggles through his hidden desires and the pressures of being a husband and father of three children. There are moments of joy tinged with sadness, contrasted with anger softened by momentary calm.

Aurora Sentinel – Quincy Snowden

Based on Petkoff’s version of the tormented and fiery Bruce, a convincing argument could be made for all future Bruces to take a stab at Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd at some point in their careers. Michael Cerveris, who played Bruce in the wildly acclaimed take on “Fun Home” at the Circle in the Square Theater in New York two years ago, portrayed the feisty barber of Fleet Street himself in a mid-2000s revival. Petkoff was a searing Sweeney Todd at the DCPA last spring; something about tortured love whisked with a fancy for death translates exquisitely.