Sunday in the Park with George at ISF

Or: Note by Note

It doesn’t take a master’s degree to see what Stephen Sondheim was after when he delved deep into the life of George Seurat and the afterlife of his most famous painting. Composed of numberless individual dots of pigment, the scene of a Sunday afternoon long ago is captured by the brilliance or shade of how it is perceived, this master piece of science and connection echoed by the technical science of music, matched by the shade in which it is performed. Color and light, music and performance.

Unlike other of Sondheim’s works that are incredibly complex welded to swooping plots, Sunday in the Park with George is a musical in sketches. Piano pointillism, and gossipy noodling weave through and sandwich between each other, just as action on the Ile de La Grande Jatte exists side by side and bleeds into each other. Like the pages of book these impressionist impressions through music sit apart, but flipped together and blended as a whole we can see both the monkeys and the cage, a whole made from many parts.

The story, operated by two acts and century, is of two artists and the women they love most in the world. Both artists are named George (Alex Syiek), one from 1884 and one from 1984 (though George the younger is a “performance artist” thank you very much). Both are chasing something wonderful the act of creation, not for themselves or for immortality but just to bring something new into the world. The women (both played by Jillian Kates) want them to look up from their canvases and see the world they are trying to capture. One is Dot (George the Elder’s mistress and model) the other is Marie (George the Younger’s grandmother). Swirling around them is cast of painters, composers, technicians, soldiers and shop girls, a whole universe of lives petty and profound (sparking in moments of lovely connection like George with an irascible elderly subject (Laura Perrotta) or Dot and Yvonne (Jodi Dominick), two women from vastly different circles but with surprisingly similar fears. But in the midst of all this life, can either George grasp that window, can either Dot or Marie force through their respective George’s head what they need to be happy. Can anyone really make their mark on the world.

A pause for a moment dear reader while I rhapsodize a set. Jeff Herrmann’s white room, seemingly composed of white washed wood and brick projects a space that is simultaneously shabby and magnificent, a poor studio or a nondescript yet vast enough to contain a world entire. It’s rust framed windows and flaking beams speak of things both ancient and incipient; things that are history or waiting to burst into being. It is the perfect white canvas that George the Elder speaks of, and fits the show like a perfect hat.

It may be George’s name on the painting but it’s Dot who runs the show. Kate’s brings to both her characters a mischievous sense of play, giving her words heft and flash, letting Dot round out her lyrics with voluptuous tones during the eponymous “Sunday in the Park with George) while giving Marie a slightly more subdued but no less playful and heartfelt (and not in the least condescending) clarity in “Children and Art.” Syiek slots into the boots of Tortured ArtistTM twice over, bringing both the taciturn George the Elder, quietly, stubbornly, trying to bring order to a chaotic world and George the Younger, a self loathing “politician” ridding the bull of commissions for one more second while his visions slip further and further away. Angst becomes him well, particularly when translated into humor (as when George the Elder impersonates some dogs with great zest. But he flowers into his full, powerful verklemptitude towards the shows conclusion, trying to find something truly beautiful.

All of this comes togethers in both acts finale “Sunday” a breathtaking aurora of every character, every voice; the disparate functions of the show coming tighter to make a harmonious whole. It’s a moment that gives you chills, when you can feel the many artists, past and present, seen and unseen, reaching out their fingers to the utmost the brush the very hem of the transcendent. Worse things to see on a stage in a wood by a river on any given summer evening.