Review: Stephen Sondheim's SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE at the Carrollwood Cultural Center

“Look, I made a hat/Where there never was a hat…” --from “Finishing the Hat”

“Art isn’t easy/Every minor detail/Is a major decision/Have to keep things in scale/Have to hold to your vision…”  --from “Putting It Together”

Art isn’t easy and neither is Stephen Sondheim, and this is especially true with his SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE.  SITPWG, as we’ll call it, is uncompromising and as beautiful as musical theatre gets.  It’s not even my favorite Sondheim masterpiece (that honor goes to Sweeney Todd and Merrily We Roll Along), but I still hold it as an example of a pitch perfect musical. Despite receiving the Pulitzer Prize, it’s never really been given its proper due, even during its original run where it lost the Best Musical Tony to La Cage Aux Folles.  La Cage was all vibrant heart, people thought, while SITPWG was all boring brains (“a little less thinking, a little more feeling,” as one character instructs in SITPWG).  But that’s not accurate, and such a suggestion actually undermines the reality that few other Sondheim shows burst with as much heart as this one.  It’s the type of show for artists from all walks of life to get energized, pumped up for their next project.  If you’re an artist, lost in writer’s block or questioning your artistic worth, then there’s no greater tonic than SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, currently playing at the Carrollwood Cultural Center.

Any time SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE is performed instantly becomes a drop-everything-and-rush-to-the-theater event. It’s not a musical that pops up everywhere like, say, Shrek or Into the Woods.  It’s a motif de celebration just by being performed.  And it’s the ultimate creation about the art of creation--“the art of making art,” as Sondheim puts it. 

With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and the book by James Lapine, SITPWG focuses on French painter Georges Seurat's pointillistic masterpiece, a painting literally created by a myriad of dots, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jatte.   It’s worth a trip to Chicago and to the Art Institute just to see this awe-inspiring giant of a work. It has become legendary, and yet unlike the Mona Lisa or Van Gogh’s Starry Night or Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, it hasn’t quite reached the status of being so famous that it’s now a cliche to even bring it up in conversation (but make no mistake, it does come close). When a projection of the painting appeared before the show, I overheard the man behind me say, "I recognize that painting! Of course!" It made me wonder what he thought this musical was going to be about.

Act 1 of SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE follows a fictionalized look at the real-life Seurat as he obsessively sketches and paints the denizens of this waterside park: Fishing girls, bathing boys, soldiers, a family, a one-eyed boatsman, a bratty little girl, a chef, and the hidden love of his life, appropriately named Dot. We follow his obsessive need to finish this gigantic work over any feelings and attractions to the opposite sex. He chooses immortality over his love for Dot, and the work he creates is at first met with derision by the public. (It's hard to believe that he never sold a work in his lifetime.) But history gets things right and Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte would become a much-loved masterpiece after his death.

Act 2 leaps nearly a hundred years into the future with George's grandson, also named George, trying to create a modern sculptural piece of light (Chromolume #7) at a time when marketing matters as much as any painting or sculpture. But the modern world and the old world of Seurat's original painting finally come together at the end, and we--the audience and the world--are ready to move on. The question is…to what?

Many individuals have issues with Act 2 of SITPWG, arguing (incorrectly, I think) that it’s not as strong as Act 1.  (These same complaints followed Sondheim’s Into the Woods’ Act 2  as well.)  Well, let me put those nay-sayer’s qualms to rest.  Act 2 is where we get the meat and the meaning, where Sondheim Land blooms in all of its complex splendor, and where we make sense of it all, weighing the journey (“the art of making art”) with the destination (the piece itself).  It also just so happens to contain some of Sondheim’s most memorable songs ("Putting It Together," "Move On," "Sunday").   

SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE is a gorgeous show that needs a cast of gorgeous voices to make it work.. And that’s where the CCC’s production shines, especially with the two leads.

Marcus Blake is terrific as Georges Seurat, an artist so driven by his work that he never looks up from his sketch pad or easel. He makes for an intense Georges, with fire in his eyes.  “I’m trying to get through to something new,” he pleads at one point.  “Something that’s my own.” He’s both artist and scientist, and though he’s obsessed with people solely as subjects for his paintings, he cannot connect with the world around him. 

Nobody writes obsessive characters like Sondheim, and watching Mr. Blake in the role, I realized the part is like Sweeney Todd’s artsy brother, except he uses a paint brush instead of a razor and creates immoral works of art rather than slicing up mortals' necks and turning them into meat pies. (Sometimes in this show, the artist seems so obsessively determined and focused  that you expect to hear, “Attend the tale of Georges Seurat…”)  Mr. Blake captures the perfectionistic nature of the artist while also making him human.  The character sacrifices everything for his work, and when he paints, attacking the canvas with his brush, it’s as if he knew he was running out of time (Seurat would die at the age of 31). 

And did I mention that Mr. Blake shakes the rafters with his marvelous singing voice, a powerful instrument that can rattle and soothe at will?  There’s a moment when he sings a single word—“Sundaaaaay!”—starting off quietly and then ultimately exploding in volume that gave me gooseflesh. And he gets to showcase the artist’s process at work where, like a Method actor or a writer, he actually becomes the characters he paints, even the dogs.  And when he pretends to be two canines yapping back and forth, it reminded me of the old Looney Toons cartoon, Spike the bulldog and Chester the terrier in Tree for Two.   

Mr. Blake is so good that we forgive minor lyric flubs, as in “Putting It Together,” where Sondheim’s torturous tongue twisters can trip up even the most major of talents.

Lisa Prieto is spellbinding as the love of Georges’ life, Dot.  She knows Georges does not pay her attention as a person, only as an artist’s model.  (“There is someone in this dress,” she exasperatedly informs him.)   There’s a moment in “Color and Light,” her duet with George, where she sits at her dressing room table, and Georges is in his studio, and she pats the powder on her skin at the same times that he pats his paintbrush on the canvas.  With her outstanding vocals, she does the near-impossible, turning “Everyone Loves Louie” into one of the show’s standout numbers.  It’s a delightful diva turn, and she also knocks the opening song out of the park. I have seen the marvelous Ms. Prieto in a variety of roles over the years, but she’s never been better.

The rest of the cast do solid work, creating the park dwellers who fill the famous Seurat painting.  

Erin Ruska makes the most of the part of the Nurse, and her expressive eyes tell us about her feelings as much as any of her words or lyrics.  Jill Ricardo brings so much to the key role of the demanding older woman.  Reagan Ricardo plays a young soldier (whose partner is a painted cardboard cut-out of a mute soldier); I particularly like how, in a small moment in Act 2, his character scratches his face while giving someone the finger.  Curtis Williams as Jules, Alexis Andriesse as Celeste #1, Amanda Lefloch as Celeste #2, and especially Katie Castonguay all add exceptional work.  The rest of the ensemble are fine, including Kari Crowther as Frieda, Neil Bleiweiss as the eye-patched Boatman, Craig Ruska as Louis, and Joel Ferrer as Franz.  James Madden and Kelly Nowicki get laughs as messy, pastry devouring boors who get crème all over their stuffed faces. Special mention must go to Jayden Garner as the child in the painting, Louise, who always rocks the stage to life when she enters. 

The show is beautifully directed by Paul Berg, who knows how to stage actors and is a master at pacing (it’s a long show that never feels long). 

Keith Eisenstadt’s lighting adds so much to the tale, especially when the colored lights pop along with Georges’ dotting of his canvas. And then there’s the Chromolume #7.  I think that this key set piece in Act 2 won’t ever be erased from my memory, no matter how hard I try.  At first I thought it looked like a water fountain with a disco ball mounted on top, and then it seemed either like an updated Nacome Gazing Ball or a low-rent recreation of one of the Daleks from Dr. Who.

Mr. Eisenstadt’s set design (along with director Paul Berg) works as well, from the hanging empty frame that will contain the projected painting, right down to the paint splotches that pockmark the stage floor.  The difficult music is pre-recorded, and Daniel Gentry’s sound design gets the job done. Betty-Jane Parks costumes are just right, matching with the famed Seurat work, and her projections add so much (the emphasis on each version of Dot that appears in the painting is nicely done).  The intimate CCC theater is a perfect space for a show like this where we, the audience, are so close to the stage that it feels at times that we are also inside Seurat’s most famous painting.

The ending of SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE never fails to elicit tears; it may be Sondheim’s most stirring moment.  We watch as the painting is re-created live onstage to the song “Sunday,” and we realize that, although he has been dead over 130 years, Georges Seurat is still with us through his work.  He lived only three decades, but he’s still being celebrated today--or, rather, his work is.  And Stephen Sondheim, who died almost three years ago, will surely be discussed and debated 130 years from now--or, rather, his work will be.  That’s what SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE so winningly stresses: That it’s art--man’s creation--that ultimately will make us immortal.    

The Carrollwood Cultural Center’s SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE runs thru March 24th

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