Maggie McKenna returning to Sydney Theatre Company for Fun Home

Maggie McKenna’s natural coming out was very different to the one she is now playing on stage, writes arts editor Elizabeth Fortescue.

In 2016, when Maggie McKenna was studying musical theatre in Los Angeles, she went to New York to catch some shows on Broadway with a bunch of friends. They saw Hamilton one lunchtime, drew breath, and plunged straight into Fun Home.

For McKenna, 24, who won our hearts four years ago in the title role of Sydney Theatre Company’s Muriel’s Wedding the Musical, Fun Home was a revelation.

Fun Home’s true story, based on a graphic novel about coming out by gay American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, spoke volumes to McKenna, who had known for many years that she was queer.

“I knew from pretty early on, like about eight years old probably, so it wasn’t that I ever had this big coming out,” McKenna says at the Sydney Theatre Company where she is rehearsing Fun Home.

“I think me and mum just spoke about it once and just talked about what bisexuality means or pan sexuality means.

“It just sort of happened organically.”

Maggie McKenna stars in a production of the musical Fun Home. Picture: Justin Lloyd

McKenna grew up in the theatre where “there’s so many queer people”, and her parents were completely unfazed, McKenna says.

Her mother is Gina Riley, who is Kim in the Kath And Kim franchise, and her dad is television producer Rick McKenna.

“They didn’t care, and I knew they wouldn’t care,” she says.

Alison Bechdel’s experience couldn’t be more different from McKenna’s.

Fun Home is dark, with repressed sexuality bubbling to the surface in disturbing and tragic ways.

Apart from McKenna as the 19-year-old Alison, the show will feature various young actors sharing the role of nine-year-old Alison, Lucy Maunder as the 43-year-old Alison, Marina Prior as Alison’s long-suffering mother Helen, and Adam Murphy as the abusive father Bruce.

Maggie McKenna previously starred in Muriel’s Wedding the Musical. Picture: Justin Lloyd

McKenna was offered Fun Home while touring the US in the musical Dear Evan Hansen, the show she joined in 2018. But the STC postponed Fun Home due to the pandemic, and McKenna spent a three-month lockdown alone in her new flat in Melbourne.

“I actually wrote a musical that I’m now workshopping. That was my quarantine baby,” McKenna says.

“It’s a bit under wraps at the moment but hopefully soon there’ll be some news on it.

“It kept me productive. I need to do something creative.”

For the irrepressible McKenna, that’s not hard to believe.

* Sydney Theatre Company’s Fun Home, April 27 to May 29, Roslyn Packer Theatre, $49 to $120, sydneytheatre.com.au