Sunday in the Park with George by Kokandy thru Nov 1st

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Kokandy’s Sunday in the Park with George at Chopin Theatre is Beautifully Scaled and Uniquely Felt - Review By: Paul Lisnek

****/4

Kokandy Productions’ Sunday in the Park with George is a beautifully scaled, uniquely felt production that finds extraordinary unique intimacy in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s incredible story of art, love, ambition, and what ultimately endures through time. Staged in the potentially problematic downstairs space at the Chopin Theatre, Derek Van Barham’s production turns the challenge of the limited space into one of its greatest strengths: the audience doesn’t just watch Georges Seurat’s world take shape, but is essentially invited to sit inside the revealed life sized painting with him.

At close range, the musical asks: What does an artist owe to their work? What does a lover sacrifice when she loves someone whose deepest commitment is to art? And, as Act II portrays in its setting of a century later, what remains when the people in a painting—or in a family—have faded into the past? Kokandy’s production answers these questions with clarity, tenderness, and powerful emotional impact.

In Chopin’s surprisingly well-suited downstairs space the figures of Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte the characters emerge as living, breathing, arguing, and life searching people even more so than would be possible on a larger stage. Here the audience is close enough to read the smallest changes in expression, feel the meaning of a glance, a withheld touch, a moment of stillness between phrases—details that carry enormous weight. Here, we don’t just look at art, we watch it’s creation. 

Director Derek Van Barham brings his grasp of both the musical’s structure and its shifting tone. Candidly, Sunday in the Park with George can become a bit esoteric when the production treats Seurat and (especially since his death) Sondheim like untouchable masters. Derek’s staging wisely avoids that trap. It honors the artists (both Seurat and Sondheim) intelligence with wit, character friction, and impatience, and indeed loneliness which were key parts of both Seurat and Sondheim’s own lives. Van Barham gets that the artist is not to be admired just because he was brilliant, but also because he was difficult, demanding, and more often than not, emotionally unavailable. This complexity makes the specific work of Sondheim’s all the more profound.

Kevin Webb (Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods) gives a compelling and layered performance as George, capturing both the concentration and isolation of an artist who is forever trying to “finish the hat.” (Not surprisingly, this is close to the title of Sondheim’s 2 volume collection of his lyrics, commentary and personal anecdotes). Webb does not reduce George to only his genius or eccentricities, but rather, creates him as a man caught between an all-consuming need to create his art with an equally immense, if poorly expressed, desire for connection.

Webb is especially effective when George appears to retreat inward even while surrounded by people demanding his attention. Clearly, George is always arranging, refining, and keenly aware of juxtaposing light with dark and red next to blue. He lives in the detail of his art, but often misses the personal emotional needs of those around him. 

Vocally, Webb does justice to Sondheim’s demanding notes and rhythms and by the time the story arrives at “Move On,” Webb has earned that song’s mixture of grief juxtaposed with encouragement.

Missy Wise Vanderzee (Bonnie and Clyde) is exceptional as Dot in Act I and then as Marie in Act II, bringing warmth, intelligence, and humor to both roles. While Dot can be pegged as a heartbreaker, Vanderzee refuses to let her portrayal be limited to a mere symbol of the artist’s inspiration. Her Dot is fully aware of the compromise she is asked to make, and refuses to disappear into or be overshadowed by George’s vision of her.

In Act II, her Marie is equally affecting. It’s hard not to compare the two generational roles, which are both portrayed with a sensibility framed by memory and ancestry, and connecting generations. She grounds the second act’s abstract nature with deep humanity.

Most importantly, there is a chemistry between Webb and Vanderzee which gives the production its emotional center. Their scenes together in both acts are both intimate and irreconcilably divided.

Nick Sula’s superb music direction is one of the production’s defining (and for Kokandy, anticipated) achievements. Sondheim’s score is elegant, difficult and quite complex and it requires much more than technical command; it needs tone, balance, rhythm and harmony (interestingly like Sondheim’s description of Seurat’s work). Under Sula’s direction, the music feels alive and perfectly underscores the power of the individual voices and blend of the ensemble’s power. The band plays the entire score with remarkable precision and delicacy. 

Sula makes the score feel more than performed, but almost constructed before our eyes and ears—layer by layer, color by color, dot by dot. It may be why so many audience members stayed on to hear every final note played long after the cast had completed its curtain call. 

Kokandy’s Sunday in the Park with George succeeds because it recognizes and embraces that the musical is more than the story of Georges Seurat and the making of a famous painting. Rather, it is about the distance between an artist’s vision and the people who find themselves, by coincidence or accident, and without permission, living within it. It is about the fear that one’s life’s work will be misunderstood, or judged as unfinished or at worst, forgotten. 

Like Seurat’s painting itself (available for viewing in Chicago at the Art Institute), this production deserves close attention. Close up, we see red next to blue, but pull back and we see violet. It’s not the reality that matters, but what becomes our reality….indeed, it’s the unfinished work of making something—and moving on.

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Sunday in the Park with George plays at the Chopin Downstairs Studio Theatre through November 1st, tickets at www.Kokandyproductions.com