Servant Sunday Afternoon on the Island Art Review
Connecting the dots in Sun in the Park with George
Sondheim's musical tribute to Seurat is a delight to the eyes and ears
Paul Marotta
★★★★✩
Sunday in the Park with George
Directed by Peter DuBois
Starring Adam Chanler-Berat and Jenni Hairdresser
Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Huntington Theatre Company
Avenue of the Arts / Boston University Theatre
Sept. 9 - Oct. 16, 2016
Having to get up early on a Sunday. I can't arraign Dot for complaining every bit she dutifully models at the break of dawn for her lover, the painter Georges Seurat. You'd probably recognize the painting he'southward working on: it's one of the almost reproduced and parodied paintings in the world. The Tv set testify The Office used it as the cover photograph for one of its seasons, but its greater claim to fame is in its pioneering apply of pointillism, the artistic style in which the canvass consists, non of brushstrokes, just of dabs or "points" of color.
The painting in question,A Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte, displayed at the Fine art Establish of Chicago, served as a theatrical and musical inspiration for Stephen Sondheim, who has been described every bit "the greatest and perhaps best-known artist in the American musical theater." For actor Chanler-Berat (Broadway's Peter and the Starcatcher and Side by side to Normal) and director Peter DuBois (A Picayune Night Music), who hopped on a plane to view the original painting, information technology was a source of creative free energy.
The Tony Award-winning musical, Sunday in the Park with George, is comprised of 2 layers that, past the end, seamlessly fuse into one. The start stratum is a fictionalized account of Georges Seurat (Adam Chanler-Berat): working on his masterpiece in the year 1884, he simultaneously struggles to connect with the people around him, particularly his devoted mistress Dot (Jenni Barber). The second is of Seurat's great-grandson, also an artist and besides named George (also Adam Chanler-Berat), who is struggling to recapture his artistic vitality.
In Act I, we are introduced to each of the luscious characters that will somewhen incorporate the tableau — exist prepared, in that location are a lot of them. We meet Jules, the pompous creative person and Georges's "friend," Louis, the bakery whom anybody loves and whom Dot somewhen marries, and the grumpy crewman with a disobedient cardboard-cutout dog. There are German servants and vulgar Americans. In that location are underground trysts in the bushes and skilful old backstabbing among friends. With his paintbrush, Georges exercises the influence he does not take in existent life and forces this madhouse to freeze, stand up all the same, and confront the mode he wants it to. In Deed Two, George #ii is presenting his latest piece, Chromolume #7, an avant-garde tribute to Seurat'southward masterpiece. He ruminates on the state of arts. He is tired of making Chromolumes, only he needs the funding.
Chanler-Berat expertly conveys the loneliness and frustration of the artist. "Connect, George, connect!" he tells himself, but how tin he when all he tin think almost is "Finishing the Hat"? The actors were in perfect synchrony with the music.
Director DuBois said that he really wanted to start off working on the music so that the actors would internalize it. They certainly did, as evidenced by Chanler-Berat's precisely timed paint-dabbing and by the practiced pitter-pattering of Jenni Barber's lovely voice as she fires off sixteenth notes in the title song "Sunday."
At first, I was thrown off because Acts I and II were so wildly different in terms of setting, ambience, and graphic symbol development. It almost doesn't work. Sondheim establishes the musical span between the two acts, but what of the characters and the thematic element?
Chanler-Berat, who plays both Georges Seurat and his great-grandson, enables a beautiful transition. No longer bearded, but nonetheless endowed with the same creative fervor, he is undoubtedly a "George," merely manages to subtly maneuver effectually the trap of embodying the aforementioned grapheme as in Deed I. The finale bridges any enduring gap between the two acts as George reclaims his artistic inspiration by looking to the past.
The painter Seurat was fascinated past the idea of the observer'south eye, rather than the painter, mixing the colors: seeing adjacent red and blue dots, for instance, and interpreting them as a violet hue. In Sunday, Sondheim takes pointillism to the phase and to the score. Georges used only 11 colors in the painting. Guess how many musical instruments are used in the orchestra?
Each instrument is a soloist; it is your ears that do the mixing. Each grapheme is a dab of colour and can be inspected individually. But take a step back, and now this person is a role of the larger canvas of lodge. Your heart mixes his native hue with the hues of those around him, of the relationships he forms, of the office he plays — and voilà, "no human is an island."
The Huntington Theatre is on an ambitious quest to stage all fifteen of Sondheim'southward productions. This is their second. In the words of director DuBois, "We are in a town where people like to geek out over certain things, and Sondheim is amazing to geek out on." Well, count me in.
Source: https://thetech.com/2016/09/23/sunday-in-the-park-with-george-review
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