Sunday in the Park with George (1986)

I’ve written about Sunday in the Park with George before, but today I’m specifically looking at the proshot recording that aired on PBS in the ‘80s. I saw it for the first time back in college and was enraptured with it then. At the time, I had the cast recording and liked quite a few of the songs from it, but the show didn’t entirely come together for me until I saw it onscreen, at which point I gained a much deeper understanding of it. I watched the recording again recently, and all those feelings washed over me anew.

To some extent, Sunday in the Park with George is more of an idea than a story.  Its two acts tell different but interrelated stories about artists named George, separated by centuries, continents, and media.  Act 1 follows the creation of Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte, a revolution in pointillism.  As Georges is drawn into his work, the rest of life recedes from him, and his model/mistress Dot is among the collateral damage.  Act 2 jumps to the U.S. in the present day (well, 1984,) where another George—purportedly Seurat’s great-grandson—is confronted by his own artistic fame.  He’s made a name for himself constructing beloved but increasingly derivative works, and he’s not sure if his path is where he’s supposed to be.

The show has an incredible score—it’s cruel to ask a Sondheim fan to pick a favorite, but I feel like if someone forced me to, this is the name that would come out of my mouth. That said, it’s dense and can feel somewhat inaccessible upon first listen. It can be overwhelming, so many intricacies, so much that seems to rely on concept rather than story or feeling. In that way, it’s a little like Georges’ pointillist work. The unsuspecting eye might look at it and chiefly see confusing mechanics, not beauty. But at the same time, when the score opens up emotionally, it's positively ecstatic with feeling. The yearning, the obsession, the wonder: the first handful of times I listened to the cast recording, I stumbled a little through the more complex passages but felt the pull of the stripped-down emotional ones.

Seeing it onstage puts it all together, as it were. I love the way we see Georges’ painting slowly come to life, both in the park and on the canvas—the Act I finale is flawless. I love how the story follows trails of the minutiae of the lives of these anonymous parkgoers who were immortalized in the painting. The second act jump can feel jarring at first, but it reminds me a little of Into the Woods, in that it deepens the themes presented in the first act, resisting the story you might want to see but ultimately giving you a much richer show for it.

And then, there’s the acting. Oh, the acting. I swear, this is peak Mandy Patinkin and peak Bernadette Peters. Both of them are excellent actors who’ve been great in all kinds of things, but I don’t know if either have ever been as good as they are here. Every moment they’re onstage together crackles, but in such an atypical way. From Dot’s frustrations in “Sunday in the Park with George,” to each deeply loving but not understanding the other in “Color and Light,” to the collapse in “We Do Not Belong Together,” to George and Marie’s tender interactions in “Children and Art,” all the way up to the soaring climax of “Move On.” Both are in excellent voice, and both make you feel each inch of their performance: ebullient Dot and interior Georges, agitated George and doting Marie.

There’s that moment in “Sunday” where they interact, where Georges positions Dot in the painting and gives her her parasol. And the way he looks at her, and his soft vocalizing of “bumbum bum bumbumbum bumbum bum,” is just so intimate, it takes my breath away. It makes me emotional every time, and he’s not even saying words. Absolutely stunning.

Warnings

Sexual references, language, drinking/smoking, and thematic elements.