Sunday in the Park with George
(2 hrs & 26 min, color, 1985)
“Art isn’t easy.”
Those words of dialogue
that are uttered in the second act of this landmark work of musical theater
should ring true for any number of people – certainly for the patron who
attempts to penetrate the mysteries of a painterly image, also for those who
aspire to put something on canvas, and most especially for those who attempt a
whole new approach to the craft. I know
for a fact that there are many practicing painters among my readership, and it
would be a shame if any of you should leave this world without seeing this
miraculous achievement in words, song, choreography, set design, technological
prowess, visual virtuosity and soulful resplendence. It draws its audience many fathoms deep into
their ethereal selves. That any finer
tribute could be paid in theatrical terms to those who wield the brush or to
creativity in any artful form is inconceivable to me. It has been twenty-seven years since it
skyrocketed to critical and public acclaim on the Broadway stage. And what we have here is a televised
presentation that was mounted in 1986, one year after that premiere, and is now
widely distributed in DVD. (Netflix has
it.) Recently I revisited the disc and
was so moved (once again, as way back when) that I have purchased my own copy
for future revisits.
The George of the title is
the Frenchman Georges Seurat, who lived a very short life from 1859 to
1891. Seurat introduced a new kind of
dot-like brush stroke, his canvases consisting of thousands of tiny flecks, so
close to each other that it remained for the eye to combine them into
amalgamations of colors that fused and formed light-struck surfaces. No mixing on a palate was required. The work to which he devoted two solid years
of his life was “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” a
landscape with many individuals in their Sunday best clothes casually posed in
profile on the sloping bank of a river, and it languished in back rooms for
many years afterward before finding its audience. Today it is a revered portrait hanging in the
Chicago Museum of Art and the focus of this musical.
The play is a witty,
mirthful, multi-faceted musical with a huge cast and a libretto that stands
very much alone in the halls of fame.
Two genius minds essentially brought it about – the composer/lyricist
Stephen Sondheim, a man of many original concepts that have made stage history
over the past half century, and a writer named James Lapine (who also directed
the original stage version). The director
of this televised version is Terry Hughes.
But there are numerous technical wizards who engineered the unusual
stagecraft that gives visibility to the Seurat technique in terms that the
average member of the audience can comprehend.
Translucent scrims play a vital part in visualization. Actually, the production as conceived would
have been an impossibility not too many years earlier. The technology had not yet been invented. Much use is made also of overlapping
dialogue/lyrics and scenic juxtapositions.
The play would be a delight just to watch, if its content were
run-of-the-mill. But there are delights
upon delights upon delights, for both the eye and the ear.
The narrative is a work of
fiction inspired by the idea of Seurat. Next to nothing is known about his private
life. George (portrayed by a fabulous
Mandy Patinkin with a voice that contains almost as many contrasting shades and
dimensions as the painting) is a kind of Everyman Artist, and Dot, the woman in
his life, is brought to exciting life by an equally fabulous Bernadette
Peters. What a twosome they make –
impeccable chemistry! She is at first
both his lover and his model. The
opening scene has her standing grumpily in the hot sun wishing they were back
at his studio making love, while he sketches and sketches in the shade. The lyrics she bounces about are hilarious,
reflecting her mixed feelings about him, loving his art but feeling
discounted. They are of course in Paris
of the 1880s on that La Grande Jatte island on a Sunday, a place where the
working classes normally strolled about, with occasional high society visitors
as well. Here the scenery is manipulated
by Seurat’s wave of the hand to suggest the phase to which his concept of the
painting has evolved at each given moment.
During Act I we meet an
assortment of colorful, highly energized
characters – George’s mother and her nurse; a German couple trying to
enjoy their day away from sweaty labor; two dithery, giggly young women with
eyes out for available young men; a woman-chasing chauffeur; a soldier; a
fellow artist of Seurat, his wife and bratty girl child; a boatman and his dog;
a baker (whom Dot later marries when she gives up on George); and an elderly
American couple from the deep south licking their French pastries and making
snide conversation about the country they are visiting. The nineteenth century scene comes to a
climax during the first five or so minutes of Act II, when Seurat has finally
gotten everybody positioned on the canvas precisely the way he wants them. They all act as if they are Seurat’s
captives, not happy with their poses or profiles and complaining about the heat
under their thick clothing and parasols.
The sequence is a real hoot; it almost makes me double over with
laughter.
Then for the rest of Act II
we find ourselves in America a whole century later, in the 1980s. Another George (also portrayed by Patinkin),
descendent of Seurat, is displaying a new invention called a chromalume and honoring
his ancestor by the showcasing of “A Sunday Afternoon” in an adjoining
gallery. He is making his presentation
assisted by his grandmother Marie (again, Bernadette Peters), a
ninety-eight-year old senile woman who is the daughter of the original George
and Dot, still hanging onto life decades later.
All the performers we saw in Act I return playing various individuals
reacting with varied opinions to the works on display. George bristles under some of the inane
comments he hears, voicing his irritation to the audience. He walks patiently nevertheless in Seurat’s
shoes “bit by bit putting it together” and is finally confronted with the
question of where his artistry might go in the future. He gets some very unexpected help in
resetting his sail, and the play reaches a final and heart swelling peak.
In spite of the comedic
tone, there are moments when we do get some sobering insight into this
obsessive man’s soul and spirit. Dot
accuses him of hiding in his work. He
replies that he does not hide in it; he lives in it. “I am what I do.” He demonstrates that claim when she informs
him that she is about to give birth to his child (to be Marie of the second
act) and that she is going to marry the baker.
He is compassionate with her but encourages her in her decision. He cannot give her what she wants; the baker
can. It is that simple for him. And the process by which the painting
emerges, the day by day sweat and labor, is wonderfully envisioned. The scene in which he works on the canvas all
alone behind a scrim is a phenomenon of music, lyrics and controlled
lighting. There simply has never been
anything else quite like it in the history of theater that I know of.
The show ends the way it
begins, with George considering manifold possibilities and naming the qualities
of which canvas art consists: “Order,
Design, Tension, Composition, Balance, Light and Harmony.” Each word is sounded out as if it were a
chime or bell being rung. For me the
play rings many exciting bells, and I am not a painter.
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