There's nothing to raise one's spirits like going to see a glorious Broadway musical. And "Sunday in the Park with George" at Studio 54 is just such a show. This is a revival of Stephen Sondheim's 1985 Pulitzer Prize winning musical that made Mandy Patinkin a star and it's wonderfully done. It's a very unconventional show. Of all the audacious things, it's a musical about a painting (not painting, a painting).
The first act revolves around French artist George Seurat while he worked on his masterpiece "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jette" in 1884 (pictured above, it's currently on display at the Art Institute of Chicago and was famously seen in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off). Seurat and this painting made famous the style called pointillism, which consists entirely of little dots of varying color; a dictionary definition of pointillism: "a style of painting that used points of color and relied on the eye and brain to blend them into a meaningful picture." Seurat was a difficult, aloof guy, the classic mad artist, and he drove his friends and mistress Dot to despair. Seurat died at the age of 31, a most controversial artist.
The second act takes place in 1984 where Seurat's great-grandson (also named George) is some kind of flailing video artist, living in the painting and his family's shadow. George seeks to learn more about great-grandfather, the painting, and art, and he comes to realize that art should be about one's expression, about what kind of legacy one wants to leave, and not about what critics and historians might or might not say.
This production uses special effects in an absolutely brilliant. The screens behind the actors literally come alive with color but does so in such a way as to enhance the performances and story, and not obliterate it. Many of the characters in the show are actually figures from "La Grande Jette" and in one brilliant scene, as the actors recreate the painting, they sing about how it feels to be stuck in a painting for over a century with lots of people starting at them.
The performance are uniformly excellent. Daniel Evans make Seurat into a likable if somewhat childlike person, someone you know is a good guy at heart but who can also be enormously self-centered and unthoughtful. You can't help falling in love with Jenna Russell as Dot/Marie (the mistress and, later on, Seurat's elderly daughter). She makes both characters wonderfully dimensional, sympathetic but nowhere near perfect. Needless to say, both actors and the supporting cast sing wonderfully and the music, while very spare and rather monotone compared to most Broadway musicals (in order to reflect the exacting style of pointillism) is beautiful.
If you have a chance to see it, I highly recommend going to see "Sunday in the Park with George." It's what great theater in NYC is all about. It runs until June 29.
The first act revolves around French artist George Seurat while he worked on his masterpiece "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jette" in 1884 (pictured above, it's currently on display at the Art Institute of Chicago and was famously seen in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off). Seurat and this painting made famous the style called pointillism, which consists entirely of little dots of varying color; a dictionary definition of pointillism: "a style of painting that used points of color and relied on the eye and brain to blend them into a meaningful picture." Seurat was a difficult, aloof guy, the classic mad artist, and he drove his friends and mistress Dot to despair. Seurat died at the age of 31, a most controversial artist.
The second act takes place in 1984 where Seurat's great-grandson (also named George) is some kind of flailing video artist, living in the painting and his family's shadow. George seeks to learn more about great-grandfather, the painting, and art, and he comes to realize that art should be about one's expression, about what kind of legacy one wants to leave, and not about what critics and historians might or might not say.
This production uses special effects in an absolutely brilliant. The screens behind the actors literally come alive with color but does so in such a way as to enhance the performances and story, and not obliterate it. Many of the characters in the show are actually figures from "La Grande Jette" and in one brilliant scene, as the actors recreate the painting, they sing about how it feels to be stuck in a painting for over a century with lots of people starting at them.
The performance are uniformly excellent. Daniel Evans make Seurat into a likable if somewhat childlike person, someone you know is a good guy at heart but who can also be enormously self-centered and unthoughtful. You can't help falling in love with Jenna Russell as Dot/Marie (the mistress and, later on, Seurat's elderly daughter). She makes both characters wonderfully dimensional, sympathetic but nowhere near perfect. Needless to say, both actors and the supporting cast sing wonderfully and the music, while very spare and rather monotone compared to most Broadway musicals (in order to reflect the exacting style of pointillism) is beautiful.
If you have a chance to see it, I highly recommend going to see "Sunday in the Park with George." It's what great theater in NYC is all about. It runs until June 29.
I love how you wove in the Ferris Bueller reference.
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