Great Lakes Sondheim musical no ordinary romp in the park

The Great Lakes Theater production of Stephen Sondheim's revered "Sunday in the Park with George" is about as good as any production of the legendary Broadway musical can get. But this production quality at times sheds a harsher spotlight on the highly introspective, occasionally problematic work. Conceived with his famed partner and book/script writer James Levine, "Sunday in the Park with George" reportedly arrived on Broadway in 1984 amid a soul-searching period in Sondheim's life, having followed the box-office failure of his previous show, "Merrily We Roll Along." As lauded as his musicals were by critics, he's been accused of being too esoteric and emotionally distant in his later works. So Sondheim, who at first threatened to retire from his Broadway career upon his previous show's failure, ostensibly had a change of heart and endeavored on a musical journey where he projected his life onto the misunderstood French neo-impressionist painter Georges Seurat. Later known as a "pointillist" painter, Seurat became posthumously famous for his seemingly passionless works realized in the form of tiny dots, sort of an oil-painting precursor to the dot-matrix concept behind first-generation color televisions. Unlike Sondheim, Seurat's paintings were originally undervalued and dismissed, particularly evidenced in the reaction to one of his most famous paintings, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La grande Jatte" (1886), which triumphantly hangs today at the Chicago Institute of Art. As the viewers look closely, they behold a mass of colored dots. As they walk backwards, an eerily serene waterfront landscape emerges, peopled with well-attired Parisians savoring a shining Sunday afternoon. Ironically, the superficial pleasantness of the bucolic landscape is hauntingly in stark contrast to the almost expressionless faces of the painting's denizens -- from older aristocrats, to young lovers, to a child and even to pets. Naturally, Seurat didn't set up an easel on a single Sunday afternoon. As "Sunday in the Park" establishes at the beginning, the titular artist (exceptionally nuanced and humanized by the great singer and actor Alex Syiek) paints individual models on location and at his studio, expressed in the show's second-act catchy ditty, "Putting it Together." In the second act, a century later, there's a new George (also Syiek), actually a relative of the original George, a few generations removed. This George is a contemporary artist dealing with conceptual lights (quite the trend in the 1980s, and evoked rather amusingly like a psychedelic arcade game under the scenic designer Jeff Hermann and lighting designer Trad. A. Burns), but he's also come to an artistic impasse. He eventually resolves to move onto more artistic self-discovery rather than remain in the safety and success of his current motifs. As the show opens, the artist's model is also his mistress, winkingly called "Dot" (and gracefully embellished and dimensionalized by equally adept singer and actress Jillian Kates). The de rigueur romantic friction -- he forsakes his girlfriend for his ultimate mistress, his art -- turns out to be one of the most conventional aspects of the show. Indeed, all the subplots of the painting's denizens are scarcely more than ordinary. Yet, they're still engaging enough to connect some of Sondheim's most complex -- albeit at times most convoluted -- songs. Like the painting itself, "Sunday in the Park with George" can come across as rather dour, but it ultimately gains its strength as a whole. So when the entire cast physically embodies the painting and sings the title number, it becomes a powerful anthem that sends shivers through even the most indifferent audience members. Likewise, the production itself gains its strength as a whole with a top ensemble cast and crew (particularly, costume designer Tesia Dugan Benson and understated choreographic movement by Jaclyn Miller) under the strong, creative rein of local veteran musical director Victoria Bussert. Like the thematic Seurat painting itself, success can be about sheer artistry over easy emotion. And in that respect, "Sunday in the Park with George" is a masterpiece to behold. Contact Howard Gollop at howieeg@gmail.com.