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.

Top Five Songs: Sunday in the Park with George

This Stephen Sondheim score will own me forever – I just adore it.  There are Sondheim shows that I probably enjoy more, but that score… Throw in Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters on the original cast recording, and I’m a goner.  Here are five songs I can’t do without.

 

“Color and Light” – This sprawling duet beautifully, painfully encapsulates the divide between George and Dot, the reasons they’ll never fit together even though they love each other.  I especially love the repetitive, rapid-fire lines that punctuate George’s pointillism.

 

Best Line:  “And you look inside the eyes, / And you catch him here and there, / But he’s never really there. / So you want him even more, / And you drown inside the eyes - / I could look at him forever.”

 

 

“Finishing the Hat” – I think, more than any other, this song communicates Sondheim’s philosophy as a composer.  It’s transposed to suit George’s painting, but the sentiment is the same – the idea that any artist is consumed by their desire to create, and that the whole world can fall away but they won’t notice because they’re trying to get the last detail just right.

 

Best Line:  “Mapping out the sky. / What you feel like, planning a sky. / What you feel when voices that come / Through the window / Go / Until they distance and die, / Until there’s nothing but sky.”

 

 

“We Do Not Belong Together” – George and Dot part in this heartbreaking duet.  Dot is wrung out, exhausted from loving George without evidence that he cares for her, and for his part, George is hungry for her to stay but doesn’t know how to tell her.  Their world together ends, not with a bang but a whimper, as they quietly slide away from one another.

 

Best Line:  “We do not belong together, / And we should have belonged together. / What made it so right together / Is what made it all wrong.”

 

 

“Sunday” – After the years and happiness and sweat that George has given up for his painting, it’s only fitting that we see what it was all for, and Sondheim couldn’t have written a better song to accompany the painting coming together.  The soft choral melody, the haunting voices of the ensemble, and George’s gentle wistfulness… It gives me chills every time.

 

Best Line:  “Forever / On the blue purple yellow red water / On the green orange violet mass of the grass / In our perfect park / Made of flecks of light / And dark.”

 

 

“Moving On” – This song is the sole representative of Act II (because Act I is just too gorgeous,) an exquisite moment between George’s descendent and the shadow of Dot.  I love the message of moving forward on your own terms and not making decisions based on what others expect or demand.  Dot’s connection with young George is sublime.

 

Best Line:  “I chose, and my world was shaken - /So what? / The choice may have been mistaken, / The choosing was not. / You have to move on.”

Sunday in the Park with George (1984)

 

I mentioned this show recently when I was reviewing Parade’s End.  I can never truly nail down a favorite Sondheim show, but this one is under frequent consideration.  Like all of his musicals, it has its imperfections, but whenever I listen to the score, my love for it floods in anew.  It’s perhaps Sondheim’s most personal show, and that shines in the music.

 

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 George 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 – 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.

 

Both sides of the story examine, from different angles, the enormity and power of art.  The George in France gives everything for his art; his contemporaries can’t understand what he’s trying to do, and Dot grows dissatisfied with playing second fiddle.  And yet, he’s propelled by an internal impetus to create, unable to stop even if he wanted to.  Act 1’s musical treatise is “Finishing the Hat,” in which George explores the hold his work has over him.  George watches “the rest of the world from a window” while he feeds his need to create something.  It controls him, and he ruefully acquiesces.  He admits “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.”

 

The failed romance with Dot is heartbreaking.  As with Parade’s End, here are two people who love each other, but neither can give the other what they need.  Dot doesn’t feel she’s a necessary part of George’s life, and George doesn’t understand why he has to share himself with her.  The conflict comes to a mournful head in “We Do Not Belong Together.”  The confronted George argues, “I am what I do – / Which you know, / Which you always knew, / Which I thought you were a part of!”  Dot replies that, while George is “complete” on his own, “I am unfinished, / I am diminished with or without you.”  She’s desperate for him to fight for her, and he just can’t.  In the end, as she walks out, she wistfully notes that they “should have belonged together.”

 

In Act 2, the American George isn’t consumed by his art, but it does rule his fears.  Act 2’s biggest number is “Putting It Together,” where George frenetically flits between sycophants and possible patrons, shamelessly schmoozing with the justifying mantra that “art isn’t easy.”  He fakes “cocktail conversation” and smilingly swallows criticism to stay on top.  He’s frantic to stay relevant, terrified of becoming “last year’s sensation.”  In the art world, “you’re new or else you’re through,” and he’s dug himself so far into an artistic rut that he’s not sure he can get out.

 

It’s a gorgeous show, with an arresting score, reflective lyrics, and tremendous themes.  In the original cast, Mandy Patinkin was stellar as both Georges, and Dot probably remains Bernadette Peters’s best performance.  The album is incredible, but if you can, watch the video of the 1984 production.  Patikin and Peters are incredible, and the score is almost overwhelmingly affecting.