The first act of this production of Sunday in the Park with George is transcendent. Truly. I have never been so moved by such a subtle combination of aesthetic pleasure and emotional resonance.
To get a grip on what I’m trying to say here: there are plot shifts as we follow the relationship between the pointillist painter Georges Seurat (called George here) and his model/lover, Dot, as he works on his painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, but the material (book by James Lapine, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim) is not primarily plot driven. It’s largely concerned with ambience and contemplation.
Sunday in the Park is an invitation to observe, with George, the characters he encounters on his weekly sketching visits to a suburban Parisian park in the mid 1880s. It’s about the imagined sensibilities and interactions of that time and place. But it’s also an invitation to consider the wonder of visual perception, the way our minds and eyes collaborate to perceive colour — in the clothing, the grass, the trees, the light that bathes everything — an invitation, in other words, to reflect on the potential for sensual ecstasy inherent in being alive.
Sunday in the Park is also a meditation on the price paid by some artists for their focus on/obsession with such considerations, the damage it inflicts on their personal relationships. As George sings in “Finishing the Hat”, “But the woman who won’t wait for you knows/ That, however you live,/ There’s a part of you always standing by,/ Mapping out the sky,/ Finishing a hat…/ Starting on a hat../ Finishing a hat…/ Look, I made a hat…/ Where there never was a hat.”
All that loneliness, punctuated by the miracle: “Look, I made a hat…/ Where there never was a hat.”
Since 2018, Raincity Theatre has been producing less frequently mounted but exquisite musicals, including Sweeney Todd, Company, and Parade. It’s thanks to the strength of this material, I assume, that Raincity consistently attracts the city’s finest musical-theatre talent.
The depth of this talent was apparent on Saturday night when understudy Tanner Zerr replaced Anton Lipovetsky as George — and aced it. That is a monumental achievement. Sondheim’s score, which has itself been described as pointillist, is ridiculously challenging. Zerr not only mastered the singing, he brought subtly persuasive authenticity to his characterization.
Jennie Neumann is also thoroughly emotionally present and in fine voice as Dot. And there are strengths throughout the company: the wine-like richness of David Adams’s voice as he sings the role of Jules, a more commercially successful artist; the warmth of Barbara Tomasic’s take on Yvonne, Jules’s wife; the loopy youthfulness of Zac Bellward’s soldier.
I’m going to stop there and sing the praises of a very old and dear friend of mine. I go way back with Michelle Fisk. The first time I saw her perform, she was in the chorus of Burnaby South Secondary School’s production of The Boyfriend. Ordinarily, I would allow this depth of connection to silence me, but I can’t let that happen here because she’s doing some of the finest work in this show. As George’s estranged mother, she sings “Beautiful”, a duet with George, that, in her hands and those of Tanner Zerr, is a heartbreaker. Mourning the loss of beauty, she sings, “It keeps melting/ Before our eyes”, and he replies, “You watch/ While I revise the world.”
About the second act. After the fulness and resolution of Act 1, I was surprised to find myself at an intermission. Why would there be a second act?
The musical doesn’t provide a thoroughly satisfying answer. It transports us to 1984, where we observe George’s great grandson, also an artist named George, as he tries to negotiate the gilded echelons of the New York City art market. The musical’s parody of the cutthroat commercialism of this scene is superficial and, as new George realizes that he can revitalize his flagging inspiration by embracing his great grandfather’s principles of “order, design, tension, balance, and harmony”, the musical ignores the multiplicity of twentieth-century art practices, which forced me to consider the nostalgic romanticism of Act 1.
Fortunately, Act 2 is short, little more than a coda, and it contains its own theatrical riches, mostly when the two time periods overlap.
And, seriously, I don’t know if musical theatre gets any better than the first act of Sunday Afternoon in the Park with George.
Everything about this production is gorgeous, notably Sean Nieuwenhuis’s projection designs, Jessica Bayntun’s costumes, and, of course, the music, which is delivered here under Sean Bayntun’s musical direction.
You deserve this. It will elevate and enrich you. I promise.
SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Book by James Lapine. A Raincity Theatre production directed by Chris Adams. Running at the VIVA Alliance (353 Railway Street) until October 28. Tickets and information.
PHOTO CREDIT: “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”, Georges Seurat, oil on canvas, 1884-1886.
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