Theatre Review: Sunday in the Park with George

The beauty of visual art, the majesty of live music, and the emotional rapture of compelling drama merge at the Wyndham's Theatre, where Stephen Sondheim's and James Lapine's Sunday in the Park with George is currently playing.

Sunday is almost a play without a plot, mostly fictitious but also based on what little information exists about Georges Seurat, the man at the center of the drama. In the first act, Georges is working on his newest painting with a new technique, chromolumism (we call it "pointilism"). He is obsessed with his work, to the detriment of his relationship with his mistress, ironically named, Dot. His devotion to his art pushes Dot into the arms of another man who will give her the comfort and attention she craves, even though she is pregnant with Georges' baby. When Dot's new fiance, Louis, accepts a job in America, Dot goes with him, but tries, in vain, to make Georges convince her to stay; instead, his demeanor and attitude about the whole affair makes her want to go even more. She gives birth to his child - a girl she names Marie, after a character in a grammar book from which she is teaching herself to read, and Dot, with Louis and Marie, leave for America, just as Georges is finishing his masterpiece, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte."

At the beginning of Act Two, the characters in Seurat's masterpiece are in their immortal poses, lamenting the weather and their eternal companions ("It's Hot Up Here"). At the end of the song, the characters, one by one, come forward and recall their impressions and opinions of Georges; each of the characters in the painting, in the play, are people he saw in the park or actually knew. Fast forward one hundred years: Georges' great-grandson, also named George, is an artist trying to find funding for his works and at the same time trying to figure out his voice and mission. George returns to Paris, where he has an exhibition coming up and wonders why he cannot succeed. Through a gap in time, Dot emerges and starts to talk to George. George becomes Georges, and he returns to the beginning, reborn with new perspectives and a new energy, ready to create.

OK, so it sounds like there's a lot going on, but really most of the action, especially the stuff about the baby in the first act, happen off stage, so the audience only gets a before and after look: now-she's-pregnant-now-she's-not. The emphasis is instead on two main characters: Georges and Dot in Act One, and George and his grandmother Marie in the second.

A lot of attention is also given to the Grant Questions of Art: What is it? What does it cost? Why do artists make it? Perhaps it is because of the depth to which these questions are explored that the show won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1985, even if it lost big in the Tony Awards that same year.

The popular reason given for its major losses to Jerry Herman's La Cage Aux Folles is that it simply isn't hummable. To that I offer two responses. One: so? I thought we threw that stuff overboard with the opening of Oklahoma! If a hummable tune is all we're after, let's all just return to the 1920s, when cheezy revues and vaudeville acts dominated.

Second: nonsense. People who don't "get" Sondheim don't pay him any attention either. His music is quite catchy if he's only given a chance (listen to "A Weekend in the Country" and try to tell me you're not humming it)., but more than that, he's working on a deeper level than most composers - including Jerry Herman - think to go (or can go). The intricacy of harmony and the development of themes and motifs, including leitmotifs, in his work is astounding when one starts to see how he assembles his music. No small wonder his body of work is too challenging for many performers.

Thankfully, the cast in London is amply qualified for the score. Daniel Evans, as Georges and George, is neurotic, quirky, and dismissive. He's a hard character to love, but he almost makes you accept his unacceptable behavior when he sings "Finishing the Hat" - a song in which he dismisses past loves as unable to accept him as he is: "And the kind of woman willing to wait's not the kind that you want to find waiting to return you to the night" comes off a genuine. He actually believes that he's in the right.

Jenna Russell is his artistic equal. Who else can cry - real tears, my friends - while belting out "We Do Not Belong Together"? Her role is extremely challenging - music aside. Any actress taking on the roles of Dot and Marie must be able to pull off energentic, pensive, angry, motherly, old, and of course beautiful, all in two and half hours. Georges sends Dot on a roller coaster of emotion, and the actress who plays her must be able to keep up. Jenna Russell does so without pause.

Others in the cast are just as deserving of praise. Gay Soper (Old Lady / Blair Daniels) is humorously entertaining and touching as Georges' (embarrassed) mother and, later, George's critical mentor. Sarah Grench Ellis and Kaisa Hammarlund play the two Celestes very well together; they play off each other and bicker constantly with each other very well. It's as if they really do belong together. Ms. Ellis also plays George's ex-wife, Elaine, a small role, and I am left wondering why they broke up. It's hinted at that George was too difficult to get along with, but she seems to get along with im quite nicely - professionally, even. Is it all a front? It's almost as if they don't know each other, sometimes.

All of the acting is surrounded by beautiful scenic design. At the beginning, the entire stage is bare, the stage is slightly raked, and the walls are white. Some curtains hang upstage center. When Georges comes out and utters his first lines, the curtains move and a black pen mark flies across the upstage wall. Digital computer technology creates the scenes and allows for some humorous moments, such as when Georges decides he doesn't like one of the trees. The curtain which was the tree, colored by computer projections, flies out stage left and all that is left is a white hole in the upstage "canvas." In Act Two, computer-generated images of George emerge to talk with patrons as the real George laments the art of making art in "Putting It Together" as the need to constantly kiss up to prospective supporters. All of this is superbly blended with outstanding acting, simply and simply lush orchestrations, and a moving score. By far, it is the best thing to play in London today.