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Published on 7/23/08
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There are those who can be moved to tears by Sunday in the Park with George, and those who still find the 1984 Stephen Sondheim–James Lapine masterpiece “bizarre, fixed, cold”—just as the model Dot calls her lover, 1880s artist Georges Seurat. Both responses are warranted. One minute you find yourself bedazzled by Sunday’s lyrical rigor and formal complexity; the next your heart has leapt into your throat as you watch the title character experience aesthetic epiphany and emotional meltdown.
This miraculous alchemy is perfectly captured in director Sam Buntrock’s ravishing, cunningly designed revival. Bringing over the superb stars of his 2005 London cast—Daniel Evans as Seurat and Jenna Russell as Dot—Buntrock knows how to balance Sunday’s head and heart. He also works wonders rendering stage pictures of the musical’s inspiration—the magnificent painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte—by projecting digital imagery on the white walls of a grand, modular room. Seurat’s canvas fills with sketches and color, and then we’re transported into his mind as figures start to move in animated sequences. Smaller frames come alive with quaint and humorous video images of dogs, monkeys and promenading Parisians.
There’s a common misperception that Sunday’s second act, flashing forward to 1984 for art-world satire surrounding Seurat’s gallery-hopping great-grandson, is superfluous and pat. But this production completely refutes that notion, showing how Seurat’s artistic sublimations in 1884 lead to the modern character’s emotional catharsis a century later. This Sunday is sublimely spectacular and, like all great art, still leaves room to feel and think things anew.
—David Cote
