Daniel Evans and Jenna Russell star as George Seurat and his fictitious girlfriend, Dot
New staging of Seurat’s life story is stunning
By Scott Harrah
Best known for “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” painter George Seurat died in near obscurity at age 31, but found posthumous fame for his “pointillist” interpretations of color and light, a phenomenon that greatly influenced the art movements of 19th and early 20th century Europe. Although historical facts about Seurat’s life are somewhat sketchy, Stephen Sondheim captured the essence of the painter’s life story in the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1984 musical “Sunday in the Park with George”—originally starring Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin—now being revived by the Roundabout in this ambitious production, a hit in London in 2005, with Daniel Evans as George Seurat and Jenna Russell as his fictional girlfriend, wittily named “Dot.”
One of Sondheim’s fortes is taking real-life stories and setting them to music. Although “Sunday in the Park with George” is not nearly as compelling a story as, say, the gloriously gruesome and macabre “Sweeney Todd” or even his quasi-biographical musical about presidential killers, “Assassins,” it remains one of Sondheim’s most acclaimed works, but lacks the brilliant score of his more successful musicals like “Follies” and “Company.” The real star of this revival, other than the music, is 32-year-old British director Sam Buntrock’s high-tech take on the story. Buntrock, a commercial animator, treats audiences to a splashy set of computer-generated images that transports us on a trip back to 1800s Paris, with moving images of Seurat’s paintings on a huge backdrop on the stage. We see sailboats, elegantly dressed Parisians, animals, and other images scurrying beautifully across the stage in Buntrock’s stunning projections. In 2005, the ill-fated Andrew Lloyd Weber musical “The Woman in White” used a similar projected moving set, but unlike that show—which one critic compared to watching a “treacly Victorian episode of Scooby-Doo”—the computer wizardry does not come across as cartoonish and gimmicky here. Instead, it is one of the most innovative sets ever mounted on Broadway.
As a musical, “Sunday in the Park with George” is not a crowd-pleaser like so many of Sondheim’s other works. The only truly memorable song to audiences that aren’t die-hard Sondheim aficionados is “Putting It Together”—with the famous lyrical stanza “art isn’t easy”—which Barbra Streisand did a popular cover version of on 1985’s “The Broadway Album.” The other standouts are the show’s only real love song “We Do Not Belong Together,” plus the rhapsodic “Sunday” and “Finishing the Hat,” which, like “Putting It Together,” explores the emotional intensity of art. The rest of the score is rather hollow, and will only thrill longtime fans of the show.
When “Sunday in the Park with George” was first produced on Broadway 24 years ago, many were disappointed by the fact that it was so thematically uneven, and that is sadly still the case more than two decades later. The first act takes place in Paris circa 1884 as Seurat paints his magnum opus on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The tension between George and his muse Dot (who eventually becomes pregnant with his child) has enough narrative panache and romantic drama to keep us entertained. Act one possesses the trenchant makings of historical musical theater, with Parisians in the latest couture of the period—all of it akin to a Sondheim-style interpretation of classic 19th century Francophone drama.
Things start unraveling in the lackluster second act, which is set in an art gallery in the mid-1980s in America. An artist named George (also played by Daniel Evans) is about to open a high-tech exhibit called “Chromolume,” featuring the same light and color technique created by Seurat. We meet the elderly, wheelchair-bound Marie (another dual role, played by Jenna Russell), a woman who claims that she is Seurat’s illegitimate child and that the young George is actually Seurat’s great-grandson. Act two is an awkward segue from the more lavish act one, and lacks the dramatic verve that was so seamless in the first half of the show. It is almost like we are suddenly watching an entirely different show—a pedestrian historical art symposium about Seurat that seems more appropriate for a college art-history class than the Broadway stage. Such songs as “Chromolume #7” and “Move On” are musically moribund to put it mildly. Only Marie’s soaring number “Children and Art”—referring to the two things she believes human beings should leave behind when they die—has the clever, sentient zeal of act one’s songs.
Daniel Evans and Jenna Russell both have the textured voices needed to give depth and life to Sondheim’s classic songs, and director Sam Buntrock does a fine job of blending the technical filigree into the surroundings. As a Sondheim revival, Buntrock’s “Sunday in the Park with George” is far superior to the respective revivals of British director John Doyle’s recent “Sweeney Todd” and “Company,” which both featured actors playing instruments. Unlike Doyle’s gimmicky spins on Sondheim, Buntrock gives us a new version of a classic that complements and enhances the story, fulfilling what should be the purpose of any high-caliber revival.
Photo by Joan Marcus
