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.

West Side Story (2021, PG-13)

Before this film came out, I was rather mixed on the idea of it. For all its faults, the original film is seminal for a reason, and remaking it seemed like a dicey proposition. On the other hand, only one major Puerto Rican character in the original film was played by a Latina, and they darkened her skin to make her “look more Puerto Rican.” So, obvious room for improvement there. Now that I’ve finally been able to see it, let’s look at the sixth Best Picture nominee.

The Jets, a gang of working-class white boys from a dead-end neighborhood, feud with a gang of recent Puerto Rican transplants called the Sharks. All their homes are set to be demolished for “slum clearance,” but both groups war over turf anyway. When a former Jets lieutenant named Tony meets Maria, the sister of the Sharks’ leader, the two are immediately drawn to each other, but their star-crossed romance makes the already-high tempers on both sides flare.

It’s probably not a surprise that Oscar-nominated director Steven Spielberg capably steers this remake, a tragic musical romance shot in washed-out colors and set amid the rubble of a neighborhood that’s already in the process of being torn down. It has a lot of old-fashioned musical flair, and it respects the scenes, flourishes, and moments that are indelibly West Side Story—the snapping, Maria’s white dress, the fire escape. But at the same time, it doesn’t feel bygone or stale. The gangs roam the streets with a pulsing energy, and when they clash, they fight rather than dance. Some iconic numbers, like “America,” “Gee, Officer Krupke,” and “Somewhere,” are staged in different locations or contexts, and while I doubt I’m going to get my memories of the original out of my head anytime soon, the reimaginings work well. The film also got a Best Cinematography nod, surely in no small part because it recognizes how to properly capture musical numbers on film. The big ensemble numbers with lots of dancing never get muddled, and the duets and solos are suitably intimate.

But as good as Spielberg’s directing is, my behind-the-camera MVP needs to be Tony Kushner for his screenplay, which I think absolutely should have gotten nominated. While his reworking of the story doesn’t quite go for the full David Henry Hwang’s Flower Drum Song, it recontextualizes so much and improves the narrative in countless large and small ways. As I said, the impending demolition of the very neighborhood the Jets and Sharks are fighting over makes their rumbling even more futile, two gangs of nobodies battling over scraps while those in power order their homes torn down. Tony’s backstory adds to his character, Maria has more fight and ambition in her, and I love the extra scenes devoted to Maria, Bernardo, and Anita’s home life. Not to mention, the film really fleshes out the characters of Chino and Anybodys in excellent ways. Swapping out Doc with his widow, Valentina, is mainly an excuse to involve Rita Moreno is a major way and wasn’t strictly necessary, but the story makes it work.

On to the acting. Even without the allegations against Ansel Elgort, his performance as Tony would be the weak link for me. His singing is just fine, and I don’t feel much emotion from him until the end. However, Rachel Zegler is wonderful as Maria, young and hopeful but also bright and strong. Her singing is utterly lovely, and I’m glad to have the opportunity to hear her sing “Tonight.” As is usual, though, for West Side Story, it’s the supporting characters who really pop. Mike Faist commands the screen as an agitated, nihilistic Riff. He’s less jocular than other versions of the character, but you get why the Jets would follow him, as well as why Tony would still be so devoted to him. Best Supporting Actress nominee Ariana DeBose is a force to be reckoned with as Anita. She’s sly, fiery, and big-hearted, and ferocious when the story demands it. Her dancing is fabulous. She’s well-matched by David Alvarez’s electrifying Bernardo. He’s hot-headed and can be domineering, but Alvarez also plays the role with heart and dignity, and he and DeBose light up the screen together. I want to give further shoutouts to Josh Andrés Rivera as Chino, Iris Menas as Anybodys, and Rita Moreno as Valentina—whether the character was needed or not, she’s still got it.

Warnings

Violence (including attempted rape,) light sexual content, drinking/smoking, language (including racial slurs,) strong thematic elements, and involvement by an alleged sexual predator.

A Few Thoughts on Stephen Sondheim

Like so many theatre lovers, I was hit last night by the news that Stephen Sondheim passed away. He was 91 years old, so it’s hardly a “taken too soon” situation, but I hope that it was peaceful and without pain. May his loved ones find the solace they need in the days ahead.

So today, I’d like to just spend a little time thinking about Sondheim and his music. This post doesn’t have a specific aim or agenda. I’m just going to start writing, and we’ll see what comes out.

I believe I was around 17 when I first knowingly fell in love with Sondheim’s music (I’d gotten into West Side Story late in grade school, and I knew I loved the lyrics to “America,” but I didn’t know Sondheim’s name.) This was a little late in my informal musical-theatre education, and it was interestingly roundabout. I wasn’t introduced to Sondheim through Into the Woods or Sweeny Todd or A Little Night Music. It was actually Assassins. The Broadway revival cast performed the finale of “Everybody’s Got the Right” at the Tony Awards, and even though it was a brief and far-from-flashy performance, it piqued my interest enough for me to seek out the cast recording. It was an album I listened to repeatedly—there were songs and sections and lines that grabbed me from the start, but others needed to grow on me as I took time to acclimate to the very singular style of the show I was listening to.

This was repeated with the Pacific Overtures revival the following year (and they didn’t even perform at the Tonys—the show had already closed by that point, but just the short montage they aired during the telecast made me want to check it out,) after which I was ready to learn a lot more about this Stephen Sondheim fellow and his music. Through the rest of high school into college, I gradually increased my collection of Sondheim shows, picking up a new album every few months until I’d heard every score, including multiple productions for many of them (I just did a quick count, and I have 32 different Sondheim albums.) I tended to begin with revivals, which starred actors I already loved (ex: Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone in Sweeney Todd, Raúl Esparza in Company,) so I often came to the iconic original casts later in my exploration. I got my hands on some of the filmed productions too, watching with rapt attention as, for instance, Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters broke my heart in the most beautiful way in Sunday in the Park with George. Every few years, I’d find a new splashy tribute concert for his birthday, which I could sometimes catch on PBS.

And of course, I started seeing live productions. The 2005 revival of Sweeney Todd is, regrettably, the only one I’ve seen so far on Broadway, but I’ve seen a number of others in all manner of regional productions (again, some more than once.) I remember sitting in my seat awash in the arresting harmonies of A Little Night Music, the tremendous production of Into the Woods I saw that filtered the fairytales through the lens of different Asian folklore influences, the moment that I realized the opening notes of “Sunday” would always put my heart in my throat. I saw an inventive A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at a delightful hole-in-the-wall theatre and a sumptuous professional mounting of West Side Story. I hope that, at some point in my life, I’ll be able to say I’ve seen them all live.

For me, what makes a Sondheim score so exquisite is the way he was able to blend those intricately-clever rhymes and puzzle-box patter melodies with searingly-beautiful themes and the spare simplicity of honest emotion. I love that Sweeney Todd features both “A Little Priest” and “Johanna,” that A Little Night Music is home to both “Now” and “Every Day a Little Death,” that Pacific Overtures is known for both “Please Hello” and “Pretty Lady.” He wrote marathons of cadence and internal rhyme like, “No dared to query her superior exterior,” and he wrote achingly-simple expressions of emotion like, “There is nothing between us.”

Rest in peace, Mr. Sondheim, and much love and comfort to your family. For more than 50 years, you exemplified the words that you yourself wrote, words I strive to live by as a writer: “Anything you do, / Let it come from you. / Then it will be new. / Give us more to see.”