"Sunday in the Park' at the Arden (2nd review)

The two acts of Sondheim's Sunday in the Park With George have never been as perfectly balanced as they are in Terrence Nolen's new production at the Arden Theater. Because this is a show about an artist's quest for balance, that's the ultimate compliment.

The painter Georges Seurat strove for design, order, tension, harmony and balance. So does his great-grandson, George, the fictional character who inhabits the show's second act. While Seurat achieved most of what he sought on his canvases, he failed miserably in his personal relationships, neglecting the woman who loved him, and this is what creates tension in the first act.

But the show has experienced second-act problems ever since its Broadway premiere in 1983. In fact, Sunday in the Park With George had only one act when it opened off-Broadway. The second was completed a few days before the show transferred to Broadway, and some critics said the first should have been allowed to stand alone.

The conceit of the first act is dazzling: Seurat sketches people he sees in the park and, ultimately, arranges them in his masterpiece, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. He uses his mistress, called Dot, as his principal model and places her in the painting's foreground. Sondheim's music is based on Seurat's pointillist technique, using many rapid dots that will coalesce in the viewer's (and listener's) mind to make a harmonious whole. Audiences were thrilled with the first-act finale, "Sunday."

Severe imbalance

But until now there was a severe imbalance between the two acts. The latter-day George's light sculptures, which he called Chromolumes, never engaged interest as Seurat's paintings did. The character seemed bland, and the plot became implausibly surreal (and Seurat was not a surrealist.)

"Sunday remains a lopsided piece," Ben Brantley observed in the New York Times when the show was revived in 2008, "pairing a near-perfect, self-contained first act with a lumpier, less assured second half."

But the Chromolume on the Arden stage, designed by Niki and Jorge Cousineau, emphatically grabs us. So do the other multi-media effects of the second act, like panels showing moving individual images of George interacting with others, an effect that demonstrates the multiple tasks an artist must perform, like fund-raising and public relations. (We see George's image take a real glass of champagne and hand off a business card to a flesh-and-blood actor.)

Most remarkable is a huge image of the park from Seurat's original painting. This backdrop sets us in Paris in our own day, with automobiles moving along the banks of the Seine; when George seems to travel through time and meets his great-grandmother, the automobiles vanish from the backdrop.

Where's the passion?

Jeffrey Coon plays Seurat and then his descendent, and he's at his best in this second act. Maybe because he's portraying a contemporary figure with strong emotions, Coon is more animated and engaging there as he struggles with feelings that his ancestor repressed. His singing is exciting, especially when he belts "Move On" with ringing high notes.

My only reservation is that Coon is so stern as Seurat in the first act that he fails to engage our empathy. Yes, Seurat is obsessed with his work and oblivious to people around him, except as objects he can use in his paintings. He was a passionate man nevertheless, and that needs to shine through. Coon might add some intensity to Georges as the Arden run progresses. Meanwhile, he's singing magnificently.

Coon's co-star is Kristine Fraelich, who beautifully sings "Color and Light," "Everybody Loves Louis," "We Do Not Belong Together" and "Children and Art." Fraelich's performance is understated until she rattles off the long phrase of repeated notes without a breath: "Staring at the water as you're posing for a picture being painted by your lover in the middle of the summer on an island in the river on a Sunday," where she is stunning. Her interpretation of Dot is simple, eschewing the coyness of Bernadette Peters. In the first act Fraelich is determined; in the second she is properly fragile as a nonagenarian.

Scott Greer is his charismatic self as a rival painter, and Maureen Torsney-Weir adds two more great characterizations to her impressive resume as Seurat's mother and a bitchy art critic. The large ensemble is uniformly excellent.

Acoustical problem

They cannot all be heard equally well, however. I've always seen Sunday in the Park With George on proscenium stages, including the Arden's 1995 production at the Arts Bank. In that type of venue, the sight lines are best for seeing Seurat's canvas, and all the voices are focused forward. Here Nolen is working on a wide thrust stage where the singers are spread far apart. Some of the cast members don't project as well as others, and the wide stage diffuses the sound.

Eric Ebbenga conducts the original 12-piece Michael Starobin orchestration beautifully. Costumer Rosemarie E. McKelvey must have had fun copying the 19th-Century Parisian outfits from Seurat's painting. They're stunning.

Like his Seurat, Sondheim has been criticized as cerebral and remote. He has denied that George is his alter ego, but our mutual friends say Sondheim is more similar to George than he admits. That lends a fascinating extra significance to Sunday in the Park With George.♦


To read another review by Jane Biberman, click here.