Sondheim’s ‘Sunday in the Park with George’ offers a glimpse into complicated lives of artists
Pulitzer Prize-winning musical based on Seurat’s famous pointillist landscape plays Oct. 27 – Nov. 5 at Muhlenberg College Theatre & Dance
Allentown, PA (Oct. 12, 2017) — “Sunday in the Park with George,” Stephen Sondheim’s rarely produced musical about art and artists, based on a famous painting by Georges Seurat, opens Oct. 27 on the Muhlenberg College stage. Winner of the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, “Sunday in the Park” is “perhaps the most intimate and personal work of Sondheim’s career,” says director James Peck.
The show runs Oct. 27 through Nov. 5 in the college’s Empie Theatre. Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics; James Lapine wrote the book. Tickets and information are available at muhlenberg.edu/theatre
“This musical, I think, is one of Sondheim’s masterworks,” Peck says, “truly one of the great musicals of the last 30 to 40 years. It looks at the lives of great artists, and artists who are trying to be great, and asks whether they can maintain the rigor and intensity that great art demands without destroying everything else in their lives.”
In “Sunday in the Park,” two artists, a century apart, strive to realize their artistic vision and create something new, without losing hold of the people they love. The first is Georges Seurat (1859-1891), a French post-Impressionist painter who pioneered the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism, using the science of color to evoke qualities of light and harmony. The second is Seurat’s fictional great-grandson, a 20th century artist who builds innovative sculptures — he calls them Chromolumes — that project images and light.
In the first act, Seurat works feverishly to complete his now-famous “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jatte,” painting obsessively and long into the night. His neighbors and colleagues are variously suspicious and concerned — and Dot, his model and mistress, struggles to be noticed beneath the hat with which he is obsessed.
In the second act — set 100 years later, in the 1980s — Seurat and Dot’s great-grandson, also named George, unveils his “Chromolume #7.” The invention is an artistic response to the “Sunday Afternoon” painting; it’s innovative and spectacular, but George is dissatisfied. He yearns to move forward but feels disconnected and adrift.
“Sondheim celebrates the magical, impossible, excruciating, beautiful creative process,” Peck says. “Act-One George creates great art, but in service to great art he does tremendous damage to the people he loves. Act-Two George is more socially skilled and has figured out how to have a life — but he feels like he doesn’t have that deep connection to his creative process. Like he says: ‘Art isn’t easy.’”
The show’s musical score reflects Seurat’s pointillist style, Peck says, with unusual harmonics and staccato instrumental and vocal rhythms. The orchestra often offers more of a counterpoint to the singers than harmonic support. It features eleven instruments — paralleling the eleven colors that Seurat used to make “Sunday Afternoon.”
Ed Bara, a veteran of numerous Muhlenberg productions, serves as musical director and orchestra conductor.
The score includes some of the most beloved songs among Sondheim aficionados, including “Move On,” “Finishing the Hat,” and “Children and Art.”
In the lead roles, the show features two seniors whom Lehigh Valley theatergoers may recognize. Evan Brooks played Woof in this summer’s production of “Hair” and Stephen Dedalus in last spring’s “Ulysses in Nighttown.” In “Sunday in the Park,” he plays both Georges: Seurat and his 20th century great-grandson. Kelly Shannon played Ruth, the Pirate Maid, in last fall’s “Pirates of Penzance.” In the first act, she plays Dot, Seurat’s model and mistress. In the second, she will age about 80 years to play Marie, Dot and Seurat’s daughter, who is the modern-day George’s grandmother.
“Evan and Kelly are both great musicians, and their vocal blend is spectacular,” Peck says. “Kelly is funny and charismatic, with spunk and a kind of gritty determination. Evan is just a beautiful soul of a person; he has an innate understanding of the sensitivity the role requires.”
The parts were made famous in the original production by Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, both in their 30s at the time — as was Jake Gyllenhaal, who starred in the recent Broadway revival. Historically, though, the characters were closer in age to Brooks and Shannon. Seurat was just 26 when he finished the painting; his common-law wife, upon whom Dot is loosely based, was even younger.
Visually, the first act of “Sunday in the Park with George” occupies a complicated space that’s partly George’s studio, partly the park itself, partly the two-dimensional world of the painting, and partly the mind of the artist, as he transforms what he sees into the familiar image of a masterpiece. To create this multi-layered universe, Muhlenberg has turned to veteran scenic designer Curtis Dretsch, New York costume designer Matt Riley, and veteran lighting designer Susan Hamburger, who has designed the lights for numerous Muhlenberg dance concerts.
“It will be visually sumptuous,” Peck says. “The challenge is to capture the world of the painting and the unusual dimensionality of the play — the way in which George lives both in the real world and in this two-dimensional representation of it.”
The second act presents its own challenges — how to represent George’s “Chromolume #7” in a way that does justice to the character’s artistic abilities and also serves the play. Peck prefers to leave the Chromolume a secret for now, but he does say that the moment takes advantage of the unique qualities of the Empie Theatre — it’s huge white walls and cavernous auditorium space.
“The show has been on my to-do list for quite a long time,” Peck says. “It is rarely produced, because it’s extremely challenging — the music, the acting, the scenery all present their challenges. Of course, it resonates for me as an artist. I can’t wait to see where it goes.”
“Sunday in the Park with George” will be performed in the Empie Theatre, in the Baker Center for the Performing Arts. Performances are Friday, Oct. 27, 8 p.m.; Saturday, Oct. 28, 2& 8 p.m.; Sunday, Oct. 29, 2 p.m.; Nov. 2-4, 8 p.m.; and Sunday, Nov. 5, 2 p.m.
Aside from the two lead roles, the show will feature alternating casts of performers. A schedule indicating which cast appears in which performances is posted on the Theatre & Dance website.
Sunday, Nov. 5, will be an Accessible Performance, with Open Captioning for patrons with hearing loss and Audio Description for patrons who are blind or low vision. Please reserve tickets in advance for the accessible section of the performance by calling Jess Bien at 484-664-3087 or emailing boxoffice@muhlenberg.edu.
Tickets are $22. Youth and student tickets are $8. Groups of 15 or more can purchase discount tickets for $16. Tickets and information are available at muhlenberg.edu/theatre or 484-664-3333.
Founded in 1848, Muhlenberg College is a highly selective, private, four-year residential college located in Allentown, PA., approximately 90 miles west of New York City. With an undergraduate enrollment of approximately 2,200 students, Muhlenberg College is dedicated to shaping creative, compassionate, collaborative leaders through rigorous academic programs in the arts, sciences, business, education and public health. A member of the Centennial Conference, Muhlenberg competes in 22 varsity sports. Muhlenberg is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Muhlenberg offers Bachelor of Arts degrees in theater and dance. The Princeton Review ranked Muhlenberg’s theater program in the top twelve in the nation for eight years in a row, and Fiske Guide to Colleges lists both the theater and dance programs among the top small college programs in the United States. Muhlenberg is one of only eight colleges to be listed in Fiske for both theater and dance.
Information Provided By:
Scott Snyder
Marketing & Development Manager
Department of Theatre & Dance
Muhlenberg College
