Directed and choreographed by Eamon Foley, this staging of the Sondheim classic is a stunner on stage in Deal.
By Alex Biese
“Sunday in the Park With George” doesn’t go easy on its audience – nor should it.
The heralded musical, now on stage in the Vogel Auditorium at the Axelrod Performing Arts Center in Deal, has two artistic forefathers, neither of whom was known for handling the public with kid gloves: Georges Seurat, the 19th-century French painter whose pioneering pointillism challenged the eye and Stephen Sondheim, the 20th-century composer and lyricist who reshaped the sound of American musical theater.
With music and lyrics by Sondheim and a book by James Lapine, “Sunday in the Park With George” is, as its title implies, the story of Seurat creating his landmark painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” which he worked on from 1884 to 1886. The show immerses the viewer in Seurat’s world, exploring the relationship between the artist and his art and glancing at the stories of the subjects he captured in the painting – including his lover and model, Dot.
Graham Phillips of television’s “The Good Wife” and “Riverdale” and Talia Suskauer of Broadway’s “Wicked” do stellar work as Seurat and Dot, grounding the challenging proceedings. Amidst brilliantly expressive lighting design by Paul Miller and minimalist set design from Ryan Howell, the 20-player ensemble creates a world depicted in dots of life as a sextet of dancers balletically embody Seurat’s colors and the stage serves as the canvas.
As Seurat insists at one point, “I am not hiding behind the canvas – I am living in it.” And, with the orchestra flanking the audience and the light show cascading over viewers’ heads, it’s often hard to tell if we in attendance are viewing the art, or if we’ve been invited to become part of it.
In this ambitious staging, paired with Sondheim’s intricate compositions, Phillips and Suskauer serve as vital emotional through lines. There’s love, hope, pain, loss and all of the beautifully messy humanity between them serving as a counterpoint to director/choreographer Eamon Foley and Sondheim’s theatrical precision on full display.
That’s especially true after intermission, when the proceedings flash forward a century or so to the mid-1980s. Now, Phillips is playing another artist named George, creating elaborate and expensive light shows, and Suskauer is Marie, his grandmother (and don’t worry, there will be no spoilers here regarding how the plots of the two halves are related).
The shift from Seuraut’s impassioned act of creation to the mechanical, finance-focused art scene George finds himself in is an appropriately jarring one – we’re thrust from paint, canvas and natural light to glad-handing at cocktail parties in search of patronage for optical machinery. But there are Phillips and Suskauer to remind us what it’s all about.
Suskauer’s second act performance of “Children and Art” is particularly devastating – the song of creation and legacy is already Sondheim at his most raw, vulnerable and humane, and Susaker delivers it with such clarity and conviction as to render dry eyes in the house an impossibility.
Lapine lays out Seurat’s artistic principles plainly in the show: Order, design, tension, balance, light, harmony. It’s clear those six points served as a mission statement, not just to Lapine and Sondheim, but to Foley and company at the Axelrod.
The highest compliment one can give the production of “Sunday in the Park With George” at the Axelrod is that it is a piece of art one believes Seurat and Sondheim would be proud of.
“Sunday in the Park With George,” presented in association with Grind Arts Company, runs through March 24 in the Vogel Auditorium at the Axelrod Performing Arts Center, 100 Grant Ave., Deal. For tickets and more information, visit axelrodartscenter.com.
The article originally appeared in the March 14 – 20, 2024 print edition of The Two River Times.
