A Review by Barbara Mehlman and Geri Manus.
Theater purists are usually very vocal about technology on the stage, especially when that technology eclipses the actual production. This group of literati disdained the chandelier in "Phantom;" decried the helicopter in "Miss Saigon;" and to this day, despite the brilliance of "The Lion King," continue to snub their noses at anything Disney.
And now, heavily dependent on technology, is the new production of Stephen Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park with George," yet it is thrilling beyond anything you can imagine. Here is a case where new media is fused with traditional ones, and the effect is synergistic in the most profound sense of the word.
Conceptually, "Sunday" is about an artist's need to create, and the angst that inevitably accompanies the creative process: "art isn't easy." Specifically, it is Sondheim's imaginings of what pointillist painter, Georges Seurat, endured as he bucked 19th century French tradition to try and "bring order to the whole," constructing a complex painting of people and their pets, known today as "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte." Looking at color in a new way, he says his famous opening words: "Composition. Balance. Light. Harmony."
The first act, which completes the famous painting, has always seemed perfect by itself, with the second act tacked on as an afterthought. But this time, a century later, still studying the artist and the artistic process, we meet another George, possibly the great-grandson of Seurat, and his modern-day creation in which he uses 20th century electronic media.
What gives this second act real substance, and ties is seamlessly to the first, is the technological foresight of director Sam Buntrock and London's Menier Chocolate Factory. In Buntrock's conceptualization, we are invited, as never before, inside the head of an artist as he renders his art. Not since James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has an artist's language been laid as bare as he obsessively creates his masterpiece, trying just as hard to fit in with the world around him as he is to keep it out.
With Buntrock's direction, we see Seurat's first charcoal line of his masterpiece perfectly calibrated to fit with the first lines of the musical score. Upon an all-white set, Buntrock and his animation team superimposed the pointillist characters in the painting onto the walls and doors, as the young painter, passionately played by Daniel Evans, paints them on the framed open canvas downstage.
Suddenly, there is a figure with a bustle and a hat, larger than life, larger than the original canvas. The song "Finishing the Hat" demonstrates the artist¹s obsession, and the technology takes on the role of the artist's brush, visually rendering just what that looks and feels like to the artist at work. "There was a hat, where before there wasn't a hat," is the epitome of an artist's creation and justification of why artists are not like other people.
Dot, Seurat's fictional model and lover, played by newcomer Jenna Russell in what will probably be an award-winning performance, brings our emotions to task in her own obsessive love for the painter who only loves his need to paint. As she leaves to save herself, we understand that Georges can't give her what she wants; only the canvas can receive his heart.
As Sondheim's characters tell us, "Bit By Bit," they are "Putting It Together." Ultimately, Georges and George complete their masterpieces and they are satisfied with their work, even if the critics aren't.
Not only is this show sensational, it's groundbreaking, not just because of the technology, but because in this production, the painting is the star, not the actors. Buntrock has shown us that this young century's technological capabilities, into which we've just begun to delve, can now breathe a new life into standard musical theater productions, making Broadway more alive and relevant than ever without becoming Disney-ed.
Do not miss this brilliant production.
Barbara Mehlman & Geri Manus
