Sunday Matineé: ‘Sunday in the Park with George’

1984’s landmark musical “Sunday in the Park with George” was one of the most polarizing and debated shows to reach Broadway in the past thirty years.  It marked Stephen Sondheim’s first collaboration outside of the watchful artistic and commercial gaze of his long-time director and producer Harold Prince.  It also served as the inspiration for a whole new genre of introspective concept musicals which are hated and loved by theatre-goers and theatre professionals alike. 

“Sunday in the Park” is a semi-fictional account of the painter Georges Seraut and the creation of his masterpiece, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.”  Seraut is best known for his brush stroke method called pointillism where the final grand image of the painting is comprised of hundreds of thousands of tiny dot-like strokes that the eye melds together at the right distance… yes, a pre-curser to television!  But, also intriguing to book writer James Lapine was the use of color and creation of color on the canvas.  Seraut, in the age of Renoir and Monet, would not blend colors on his palate–he would only use primary colors and he would force the eye to blend the colors on the canvas.  Seraut called this method “Chromoluminarism.”

Unlike conventional musicals, the show opens with a scene between the two lead characters rather than a big opening number.  During the scene we are introduced to Georges, an artist sketching his model/lover, Dot, in a Paris park.  When Georges doesn’t like the shade created by a tree in the park, he erases it from his sketch book and it flies out of the scene on stage.  When Georges wants more boats in the river, he draws them and they appear on stage.  The entire stage is what occurs in Georges’ mind–we are invited into the artist’s mind as he creates his masterpiece.  Here are two Broadway Giants, Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, in the title song “Sunday in the Park with George.”

We are also slowly introduced to all of the other figures in the painting as we learn back-stories and sub-plots about their characters and their significance in Georges’ life.  But the main story in Act 1 is the conflict between Georges and Dot.  Georges is the artist focusing on a vision that no one else can see or even comprehend if he tries to explain it to them.  Dot represents the rest of the artist’s life.  She represents all of the things that serve to distract the artist from his vision.  He loves Dot, but he can’t give her the life that she wants.  He knows that this causes her pain, but the power of his vision and creative desires overpower everything in his life.  Al of this is conveyed in a brilliant song, “Color and Light,” which so perfectly defines these characters and their conflict.  Listen closely how Sondheim uses the staccato style (short, clear-cut tones and chords) to reflect and emphasize Seraut’s pointillist painting style.

To protect her feelings, or perhaps to punish Georges, Dot moves out and takes up with the local baker, becoming his mistress.  The next thirty minutes of the play bridge together scenes, snippets of scenes, and portions of three or four different songs making a grand journey into the various characters of the paintings’ consciousness.  Part of the sequence is referred to as “The Day Off” and other parts are identified by the name of an individual song, but the whole journey is a non-stop sequence of theatrical episodes that are connected together in a way not scene on Broadway before this.  Georges is constantly sketching throughout the proceedings and he sings at various times on behalf of the characters or in tandem with them–a soldier, a boatman, a nurse, even a dog or two.  Dot takes the stage to explain to us why she left Georges for Louie the baker.  For those who claim that this show is devoid of any real melody, please take notice of this infectious performance.

At the end of this extraordinary sequence of mini-scenes and songs, Georges sits with his sketch pad and reflects on his day’s work.  As he does, he get to peer into his inner thoughts and we finally get to understand a little bit of his motivation.  The song, “Finishing the Hat,” has become an anthem of sorts for artists and theatre people world-wide.  And it has been the inspiration for countless creative professionals.  More on this song later, but be sure to watch the scene after the song.  It has a great little exchange between the “ugly American” characters and an obnoxious French person trying to communicate.  Also, we see a bit of very clever staging used to reveal that Dot is now pregnant with Seraut’s child.

The Americans are taking Louie the baker back home with them and Dot with child are to go as well.  Dot tries to get Georges to reveal his feelings and to beg her to stay with his child, but Georges knows that he could never be the man Dot and a child would need.  In one of the truly great “break-up” songs written for Broadway, Georges and Dot realize that they do not belong together.  Please, take note that the song never really ends or fully resolves.  It sounds like it’s about to… but then the lyric “I have to move on” almost sounds like a fragment of another song…

Now, free from distraction, Georges’ finally completes his work and the first act finale of “Sunday in the Park with George” is a theatrical experience of music, lyric, performance, costuming, lighting and scenic elements which will live in the memories of all of us so fortunate to have been in the tiny Booth Theatre in the mid-80’s.  From 1:20 to 1:30, listen to how Sondheim gleefully uses harsh, dissonant chords that build up and resolve into a perfectly satisfying chord right on the word “Harmony.”

Act two of “Sunday in the Park”, like many of Sondheim’s shows, is problematic.  It’s been posited that Act One is really a complete one act show which ends in such a satisfying way that Act Two didn’t stand a chance to live up to the promise.  Still, I find Act Two to be thoroughly satisfying, just in a different way.  We are taken to 1984 Chicago, where Seraut’s painting is on permanent display.  In an inspiring use of vivid imagination, we are guided through the thoughts of the two-dimensional figures in the painting and we learn what it is they all must be thinking while frozen forever in a masterpiece.

We are in Chicago also to see a young, modern, visual artist named George who is presenting his latest exhibition in conjunction with Seraut’s painting.  We learn that George is none other than the great-grandson of Seraut.  All of the actors from Act One take on new roles in modern-day Chicago and some of the parallels are fun.  Patinkin play George, of course, and Peters plays Marie, George’s grandmother and therefore, Dot and Georges’ daughter.  My favorite is the actress from Act One who plays Seraut’s mother who appears in Act Two as an unforgiving art critic.

George is at a standstill with his art.  He is constantly struggling to find something new.  His personal life is in a shambles and he’s going to have trouble finding income for his next project if he can’t get out of his artistic rut.  He is incredibly close to his grandmother, Marie, but refuses to accept that he is in fact Seraut’s great-grandson, as she insists.  He writes the notion off as family legend.

Marie carries a little red grammar book that her mother used to learn English.  We had seen this book in Act One so we, the audience knows that the story is authentic.  Georges is to take his art to the Island of Le Grande Jatte for an exhibition celebrating Seraut, Marie is to go as well.  Unfortunately, she dies before she can make the trip and we see a crest-fallen George sitting alone in the park reading from the book.  As he continues to read the notes in the back of the book that Dot had left almost as a diary about Seraut, Dot appears from the past to connect with and inspire George.

And so the disintegration of their love in Act One is finally repaired and resolved with this song in Act Two.  now we see where those lyrics “I have to move on…” came from and why “We Do Not Belong Together” never really sounded like it fully resolved.  As he connects with his past, George is newly inspired by not only Dot but all of the characters from the painting and by art itself.  He is ready for his masterpiece.

Time for trivia and anecdotes.  Back in 1984, the big hit musical was “La Cage Aux Folles” with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman and book by Harvey Fierstein.  It was a crowd favorite but many theatre insiders secretly had disdain for it as an old-fashioned and insipid show which used caricatures instead of fully formed characters and had pointless song and dance numbers just for the sake of having a pointless song and dance number.  Other than the subject matter, “La Cage” could have been written in 1955.  When “Sunday” opened, the battle lines were drawn and you were either a “La Cage” person or a “Sunday” person.

The rivalry got heated and the egos involved were formidable.  You often hear writers and actors and directors showing disdain for any kind of competition within the theatre industry.  “Oh, we’re all one big family,” “We want everyone to succeed,” “You can’t really compare art”… well, not in New York in 1984.  I don’t remember the folks involved in this debate demurring much.  They were out of the closet about their opinions of Herman’s work or Sondheim’s work.  So much so that when “La Cage” swept the Tony awards that year, Jerry Herman said, “There’s been a rumor that the simple hummable show tune is dead.  Well, it’s alive and well at the Palace.”  What a nasty swipe at Sondheim.  Sondheim had the last laugh though as “Sunday” became one of the few musicals to win the Pulitzer prize for theatre.

When “Sunday in the Park” was work-shopping and beginning previews, “Finishing the Hat” hadn’t been written yet.  It has been reported that Mandy Patinkin has having a lot of trouble understanding his character’s motivations in the first act.  Finally, very close to opening night, Sondheim presented him with “Finishing the Hat.”  With that one song, Patinkin’s entire character fell into place.   “Finishing the Hat” has become the anthem to so many in the theatre and other areas of the performing arts.  But, I wonder if Mr. Sondheim truly recognizes how far-reaching that little four minute song has become.  Last year, in his acceptance speech for best score of a musical for “In the Heights,” exuberant composer Lin-Manuel Miranda shouted “Mr. Sondheim look, I made a hat, where there never was a hat, and it’s a Latin hat at that!”

My father was in the publishing business.  We worked for the same magazine for over twenty years.  In the late 1980’s he left his company, sold his house, cashed in his pension and started his own magazine.  It was his vision, it was his dream, and it became his obsession.  I had already moved to New York and was working on Broadway.  One day, a large manila envelope came in the mail.  Inside was the first issue of his magazine with a hand-written note clipped to it.  It simply read:  “Dear Son, Look, I made a hat, where there never was a hat.”

For our finale today, I bring you last year’s Tony Awards.  Mandy Patinkin accepting a life time achievement award on behalf of Stephen Sondheim and then a scene from the visually stunning revival of “Sunday in the Park with George.”

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