JUST IN TIME FOR THE TONY AWARDS TONIGHT! MY REVIEW OF THE LAST SHOW I SAW THIS SEASON.
My parents must have given me over fifty VHS’s as presents during my childhood. There were the animated classics (“Ferngully,” and “The Little Mermaid” come to mind) as well as live-action fantasies that fueled my creativity, like “The Goonies.” But none compared to a VHS I unwrapped when I was five years old.
My mother had just returned to our Los Angeles home from a trip to New York City, which I knew equaled a wealth of surprises the moment she unzipped her suitcase. As she reached in, I impatiently bounced around on the floor of my parents’ bedroom. Her arm unfurled to reveal a bag containing what I quickly deduced (according to the size and weight) was a video. The bag crinkled as I reached my arm in and pulled out a bright orange VHS titled “Sunday in the Park With George.”
What ensued not only cemented my devotion to the composer Stephen Sondheim, whom I discovered at the age of four with “Into the Woods,” but opened my eyes to the post-Impressionist painter George Seurat, whom the story is centered around.
At that point it was the most poetic work of art about an artist that I’d ever seen. (Of course, at five, the only other references I had were landscape painters on local PBS affiliates and instructional videos at pottery painting parties.) The isolating devotion the central character of George displayed toward his art left a lasting imprint about the sacrifices of creation; that and the original production contained Bernadette Peters, who, at five years old, I was as fiercely devoted to as my own family members. So it was with some trepidation that I went to Studio 54 a few weeks ago to catch the first Broadway revival of my dearly beloved show.
Upon entering the converted disco I found a stage reduced to a portion of the normal size. Pristine white walls with a few large doors (marked only by small knobs) enclosed the space. Other than an easel, and a few small tables, it was a bare stage waiting to be painted.
From the moment the lights went down and Daniel Evans (George) delivered the famous first line, “White: a blank page, or canvas,” I felt a flood of memories rush through me. But the question that remained to be answered was whether this production could transcend the nostalgia factor and win my praise by its own merit; the answer was a resounding yes.
The first act of the musical focuses on the creation of Seurat’s breakthrough painting, “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” a masterpiece displaying his trademark pointillism technique (where small flecks of different colored paint are “dotted” on the canvas so closely together that the eye, not the paint palette, blends them). James Lapine’s original 1984 staging used flats that emerged out of the wings, or the floor of the stage to create the “canvas”; the production at Studio 54 translates that idea to the 21st century with enchanting projections.
My fear coming into the show, after hearing from friends that it resembled the “coolest Power Point presentation [they’d] ever seen,” was that the material would be upstaged by a gimmick; instead it creates a companion visual to the central theme of the show – the painter’s obsession with his work. As the first act progresses, Daniel Evans sketches several of the characters populating his life. With a slash of his hand through the air, a line appears along the white walls of the stage. At times he grabs a small canvas and sits staring at it, only to see a projection of a dog come alive and interact with him, bouncing around the stage with movement that is impossible in a painting. It is in these moments that the brilliance of the projections reveals itself: an artist’s work has a way of coming alive in their own mind (and ruling that mind) unlike anywhere else.
Playing the role of Dot, a woman both in love with the flawed artist and trying to ground him, Jenna Russell was able to do the unthinkable – make me forget (at least momentarily) Bernadette Peters’ interpretation of the role. Her character seems to ask the question of George: can you be a successful artist without the tunnel vision that takes you away from living your life?
It is when negotiating the answer to this question that Sondheim’s score hits me in a way that has only deepened with age. George is the type of artist whose only way to live his life is to bring order to it by creating. From the time I discovered the show as a child, this has been a feeling I sympathized with.
The brilliance of the show’s construction is how much it mirrors a Seurat painting. Sondheim presents the audience with “flecks” of information regarding George’s relationship to the outside world and his art, leaving the audience to piece them together. Much like the post-Impressionist’s work, it is clear enough to gather meaning, without being so rigid as to tell you exactly what you are seeing.
What is currently playing at Studio 54 (until June 29th) has much more to recommend than just the brilliant show itself, and lead actors. The sparse orchestral arrangements are too minimal at times, but it only adds to the power of some of the choral work by the ensemble at the end of the first act. Each actor who makes up the ensemble has moments of striking clarity with the material (particularly Mary Beth Peil as George’s mother, whose rendition of “Beautiful,” (not Christina Aguilera’s) brought me to tears), which is often lost in Sondheim revivals . Even through the second act, a notoriously flawed counterpoint to the perfection of the act before it, there are newly discovered moments.
Sondheim’s work, on this show as much as any of his other work, has a way of polarizing its audience in the same way as George is isolated from the world. Through the years that I have grown and revisited the show, I find it to be as textured as any piece of fine art; it will always reveal something new to the viewer, even after 17 years of living with it. Sitting on my own in the theater, I looked around and wondered who was discovering the piece for the first time. Here’s hoping they have as rewarding of an experience with it as I have. Not everyone is lucky enough to have parents like mine.
A lovely blend of your personal past mingled with the review of the show. Like Seurat's paintings, our perception of the present also highly colored by the events of our past.
No live blogging of the Tony's?? I'm stuck at a business class lounge in Phoneix for 2.5 hours for a layover. I'm keeping up with the Tony's on the NY Times - Raul Esparza got passed over again!
Posted by: jolene | June 15, 2008 at 09:35 PM
I actually just saw that show about a week ago as a birthday/graduation gift. I previously knew nothing about the show other than the song "Move On",which I had heard on the radio and immediately fell in love with. I am and artist so it connected to me, and I had to see the musical. Needless to say I loved it and I am now on my way to learning every word. However, despite how awesome the projection affect was, I felt that it took away a bit of the artistic craft behind the show as seen in the original production. I mean, it seems a little off to have a show based on a painting, yet not have that painting reproduced in paint.But,that is a minor critical point. As far as the leading actors, I felt that they were brilliant, and listening to the original craft after my experience with the revival I felt even a bit more affection for the cast I had seen (whether this is because they provided me an image in my mind, or because i genuinally believed to be better than or equal to the original cast)
On a side note, I thought Daniel Evens' eyes were perfect for the role.
Posted by: Sarah Sterner | June 17, 2008 at 09:51 AM
My feelings were considerably more mixed. I went to the Saturday matinee on June 6 (hence what I saw was Saturday in the Park with George), and this was the first time I had actually seen the show or heard most of the score. For the most part I think the is indeed brilliant, with a uniformly strong cast. I see no reason for the director not to take advantage of current technology, and they managed some effects (like the dogs) with great skill and humor. I won’t go into individual performances as I saw no weak links, but the reason the play didn’t really jell for me had much more to do with the work itself than the production.
Here’s my problem: clearly the second half of the show is designed to mirror the first in its characters and in making a statement about “art.” George (whom I’ll distinguish from ancestor Georges), feeling himself at a creative dead end in repeating a stale formula that doesn’t involve any passion or freshness, travels overseas to the site of great-grandfather Georges’s greatest triumph, the Ile de la Grande Jatte, and presumably in doing so he finds the inner strength to discard the sterile experiments he’s been laboring with and strike out in a new, more heartfelt direction. But using Georges Seurat as a model strikes me as extremely odd, for few painters were more imprisoned by their own theories than Seurat was, and he has always struck me as a very limited and not very spontaneous painter – especially in comparison to near-contemporaries like Van Gogh, Monet, or Renoir, or a successor like Matisse. My point is not to denigrate the play because of my personal reservations towards Seurat, but rather to suggest that he is a peculiar example for a young successor George to emulate given the degree of theory and the cautiousness with which the older Georges approached his work. (It after all took Seurat two years to do that painting, with multiple preliminary sketches.) I don’t know if this is making much sense or if anyone will agree, but I found these ironies a bit troubling, and they prevented me from entering into the spirit of the work with total conviction.
On first hearing, I don’t feel this is Sondheim’s strongest score either; I tend to find the freshness of invention he displayed in Company and A Little Night Music has not carried through to shows that present clever concepts but not quite the same degree of melodic inspiration. I might feel differently if I got to know the score better, but aside from a few songs like Putting it Together, it feels like a somewhat labored and stale retread of familiar Sondheim devices. Perhaps a bit like the work of the younger George Seurat.
Posted by: Larry | June 17, 2008 at 11:04 PM
Glad you loved it. I had a completely different take on the performances. I did love the physical production and the supporting cast. But neither Daniel or Jenna surpassed or erased my memories of Mandy and Bernadette, who I had seen 6 times during the original run. I did think Jenna was stronger in Act Two than Act One. I did keep hearing their voices during the show. Very distracting in my head!
I guess it's true... no two people see the same show the same way!
Posted by: Bruce | June 20, 2008 at 02:50 PM