50 Favourite Musicals: 12: SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE (1984) (Stephen Sondheim)

The 50 shows that have stood out down the years and, as we get up among the paint cards, the shows that have become the cast recording of my life:

 First performed: 1984, Booth Theatre, NY

First seen by me: 1990, Lyttelton Theatre, London

Productions seen: three
  
Score: Stephen Sondheim

Book: James Lapine

Plot: Paris, 1884: The impressionist painter Georges Seurat obsessively works on his large pointillist painting A SUNDAY AFTERNOON ON THE ISLAND OF LA GRANDE JATTE despite the ridicule of the public and critics; George is also unaware of his mistress Dot's growing resentment until she leaves him.  Despite all this, he finishes his masterpiece.  A hundred years later, Seurat's great-grandson George fears his own artistic vision is fading..

Five memorable numbers: SUNDAY, CHILDREN AND ART, FINISHING THE HAT, PUTTING IT TOGETHER, MOVE ON

So here we go.  Each musical I choose from now on are the ones which mean the most to me, the ones that all feature indelible memories of songs or stage and screen images; these are the ones that on any other day might appear higher up in the chart.  So why does SUNDAY not make it to the Top 10?  A certain austere distancing in James Lapine's book which makes it easy to admire but difficult to love?  The tricky second act where, after the lovely opening scene where each of the painting's characters relate the history of LA GRANDE JATTE and the fate of Seurat, it then pitches into the 1984 sequence which, in essence, entails the audience having to warm to a prickly new lead character too late in the day?  The character of Dot which feels sketched in at best and should be more pronounced?  After the shock Broadway failure of MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG in 1981 which severed forever the working relationship between Sondheim and his longtime director-producer Hal Prince, Sondheim felt disenchanted with musical theatre.  However when he was approached by the younger playwright-director James Lapine he found a new impetus to do something different, more experimental.  Lapine suggested the teasing enigma of Seurat's painting and that was the spur.  The first-ever showing of SUNDAY was at the Off-Broadway not-for-profit theatre Playwrights Horizons for 25 performances only.  When it opened Lapine and Sondheim had only the first act completed - the full show was only staged for the last three performances.  Despite this they still managed to get the show financed for a Broadway transfer in 1984.  Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, while known stars, had never appeared in a Sondheim show before and despite their frustrations during the Playwrights Horizons run in trying to shape their characters while half the score still was being worked on, they both opened on Broadway and both received Tony Award nominations.  Bernadette was particularly frustrated in the under-developed role of Dot which was only solved when Sondheim's friend playwright John Guare suggested that while Seurat is painting his masterwork maybe Dot can be learning to read?  Dot's joy in bettering herself is all the more cruelly dashed as Seurat is so absorbed in his art.  Sondheim and Lapine also gifted the actress playing Dot with the second act role of Marie, Dot's 98 year-old daughter, before Dot appears again in the final scene which ties in all the strands of the three lead characters.  Lapine's Broadway production was nominated for 10 Tony Awards but only won two design awards, it was the year of the feel-good juggernaut LA CAGE AUX FOLLES which beat SUNDAY in most of the bigger awards; however it did better at the Drama Desk Awards where it won 8 of it's 13 nominations including Best Musical.  By a stroke of luck just as the Box Office was starting to slow down SUNDAY won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama which perked the Box Office up again and the show closed after a year, the good news being that a week after it closed, the cast returned to film it for television which is now available on DVD.

I had to wait six years to see the show - after having fallen in love with Sondheim's score through the original cast recording - but found that National Theatre production disappointing as Maria Friedman failed to soar to Bernadette Peters' artistry but Philip Quast was an excellent Georges / George, deservedly winning the Olivier Award for Best Actor in A Musical.  It also won Best New Musical - beating Sondheim and Lapine's London production of INTO THE WOODS!  It would be 15 years before another London production came along but this time it was the Menier Chocolate Factory's game-changing production which incorporated the wonderful designs of Timothy Bird's digital projections which flooded the stage with colour and fluid movement.  Used with economy and wit, the digital animations were a total delight with nice touches such as the ensemble leaving the onstage 'tableau' of the painting one by one at the start of the second act, while their character digitally reappeared in the original painting behind them hanging on the Art Institute of Chicago's wall.   More importantly they did not distract from the performances particularly that of Daniel Evans who had never been better than as Georges / George.  This production also marked my first time visiting the Menier and it has stayed in my mind as one of their finest productions.  Sam Buntrock's production transferred first to the West End where Evans was joined memorably by Jenna Russell as Dot and then to Broadway in 2008 where I saw it with Owen and my late friend Dezur at Studio 54.  This production was nominated for 7 Tony Awards but failed to win any as it was the year of two other all-conquering revivals of SOUTH PACIFIC and GYPSY.  However Buntrock's production triumphed at the Olivier Awards winning 5 of it's 6 nominations including Best Musical.  But above all, there is Sondheim's wonderful and challenging score - the score shows itself as Sondheim's most personal to date, in particular his glorious solo for Georges "Finishing The Hat" in which he wonderfully encapsulates the joy of the artist in creating something from nothing while acknowledging the personal cost that brings.  Whatever failings the book has, the score for SUNDAY is the one that effects me the most emotionally.  The three songs that finish the first act floor me - Dot's farewell "We Do Not Belong Together" usually starts me off. Georges' duet with his mother "Beautiful" keeps the snuffles on a fairly low-light and then the tears just flow during the final song "Sunday".  One of the most beautiful melodies ever, it's sung softly by the characters in Seurat's painting as he moves around them, arranging them into the final 'tableau' that will freeze as A SUNDAY AFTERNOON ON THE ISLAND OF LA GRANDE JATTE - It gets me EVERY time - and I'm not talking one tear trickling down my cheek, I am talking seat-row-shuddering sobs.  To make things worse, the three last songs of the second act mirror this: George's despairing "Lesson #8", George and Dot's empowering "Move On" and a final reprise of "Sunday"; floods... just floods.

My video choice has to be the first act finale of the filmed original Broadway production with Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters.  The DVD has a commentary by Sondheim, Peters and Patinkin - and Sondheim and Patinkin start to blub during this scene so I am in good company.  Let's see if the score works it's potent magic on me next year when I see it at the Savoy with Jake Gyllenhaal and and Annaleigh Ashford who are repeating their roles of Georges / George and Dot / Marie from the last Broadway revival in 2017.