Sunday In The Park With George

Earlier this week, we went to see the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of the Broadway musical Sunday In The Park With George by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. For anyone who is not familiar with this show, it focuses on the artist Georges Suerat and his famous painting "A Sunday Afternoon On The Island Of La Grande Jatte". You may not be familiar with the artist or the title but you surely have seen the painting itself. The painting is currently on permanent display at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The show is a fictional imagination of the creation of the painting by Seurat himself (played by Daniel Evans) and some of the people that inspired some of the figures in the painting, including Seurat's fictional love interest, the cleverly-named 'Dot', played by Jenna Russell. Both actors are quite accomplished in London but "Sunday" represents their breakthrough in the US.

I had the opportunity to meet both Daniel Evans and Jenna Russell at a special event for the show. They were both extremely friendly and seemed genuinely interested in speaking with some of the fans of the show. They performed three songs from the show:

"Sunday In The Park With George" is the first number in the show and Dot is posing for George. In the painting, Dot is the woman on the right in the foreground. As Dot poses, she expresses frustration at George and his creative process.

In "Finishing The Hat", Seurat is alone with his unfinished painting. Dot has reached out to George but he has dismissed her in favor of his work. But he sings of missing Dot and how his work has enveloped his whole life.

"Move On" is from Act II of the show. This act takes place 100 years later and George's great-grandson (also named George) is also an artist but is working with technology. While visiting the Island of La Grande Jatte, the setting of famous painting, younger George has a vision of Dot who tells him to stop worrying about what people think of his art or the commercial prospects for his work, and focus on creating art for himself -- just as his great-grandfather did 100 years ago. In this number, it helps to know that the real Seurat never sold a painting and died at the age of 31.

Also included is a clip from Good Morning America where Stephen Sondheim himself and James Lapine discussed the show with Diane Sawyer.

As you can clearly see from the clips, Daniel Evans and Jenna Russell are remarkable talents and seem to share genuine chemistry together, which gives added depth to the strained relationship between George and Dot, as well as gives richness to the painting itself.

And the special effects used in the show are as good as I have ever seen on Broadway. The show creates the "canvas" of the painting with lighting effects and video that illustrate the evolution of the painting. As George erases from his sketchpad, the "canvas" on stage gets erased as well. At one point, there are four "Georges" on the stage at once and the "real" George pours champagne into the simulated glass of one of the simulated Georges. Truly incredible work.

Even though the show is fiction, seeing some of the (possible) inspirations of some of figures in the painting creates an added dimension to the work. Now the painting almost seems to be a 3D world where the figures interact with each other and with the viewer. As a non-artist, "Sunday" gave me a look into the kind of single-minded focus and dedication that is required to create such an iconic work.

This is yet another link in our expanding connection with the movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". We have met both stars of the movie, Matthew Broderick and Alan Ruck, and now we have seen the painting in that hysterical scene in the movie. Maybe we'll meet the members of Yello next...