Did Critics Offer Praise At New Sunday Revival?Last evening, director
Sam Buntrock's British import revival of
Stephen Sondheim and
James Lapine's musical
Sunday In The Park With George opened at
Roundabout Theatre Company's
Studio 54. The cast of the musical includes
Daniel Evans as George/George,
Jenna Russell as Dot/Marie,
Michael Cumpsty,
Jessica Molaskey,
Mary Beth Peil,
Ed Dixon,
Anne L. Nathan and
Alexander Gemignani.
After having earned
five Olivier Awards exactly a year ago last Monday, were Broadway critics similarly impressed with the show? The answer is a qualified "yes."
Positively gushing in her four-star review,
USA Today's
Elysa Gardner lauds: "[Y]oung British director/animator Sam Buntrock has managed to use technology to enhance the bittersweet beauty of one of that era's most substantive musicals...The superb Daniel Evans makes clear the generational distinctions between the Georges while linking their obsessive, narcissistic tendencies, and making them sympathetic nonetheless. Jenna Russell, a sassy, sensual Dot, is funny, touching and completely convincing as the 98-year-old but still-wily Marie. Buntrock also culls lovely supporting performances from Michael Cumpsty, Jessica Molaskey, Mary Beth Peil and others."
Proclaiming the show "an experience to be savored,"
David Rooney of
Variety sings
Sunday's praises: "Daniel Evans brings moving intensity and a febrile punctiliousness that's almost painful to watch as both 19th-century French Neo-Impressionist painter
Georges Seurat and his great-grandson George, a contemporary American multimedia artist. As his aptly named mistress, Dot, and later as her elderly emigre daughter Marie, Jenna Russell is incandescent....From the first flashes of light that accompany Sondheim's opening chords -- as a charcoal stroke slashes the back wall of designer
David Farley's ingenious blank-canvas, skewed-perspective set and details are rapidly sketched in by
Timothy Bird's
CGI projections -- there's an absolute assurance and thrilling synthesis of creative vision in evidence here."
Labeling this an "elegantly acted, directed and designed revival,"
Joe Dziemianowicz of New York's
Daily News is similarly enthused: "The excellent Daniel Evans and Jenna Russell reprise their West End roles. Evans brings fiery intensity to each George, but is never mannered. As Dot, Seurat's muse and mistress, and her daughter Marie, Russell draws you in with radiant warmth....Buntrock, a young British up-and-comer, isn't just concerned with 'Gee whiz' effects. His sharp and graceful staging awakens the beauty in the exhilarating score and makes weaknesses in the story -- Act II restates what's already been said in Act I -- fade."
Deeming the production a "glorious revival,"
The New YorkTimes'
Ben Brantley offers a positive review: "The great gift of this production, first staged in London two years ago, is its quiet insistence that looking is the art by which all people shape their lives. As a consequence, a familiar show shimmers with a new humanity and clarity that make theatergoers see it with virgin eyes. And while
Sunday remains a lopsided piece -- pairing a near-perfect, self-contained first act with a lumpier, less assured second half -- this production goes further than any I’ve seen in justifying the second act’s existence.... And Mr. Buntrock’s
Sunday, which also stars a charming Jenna Russell as Dot, has the same intimacy it possessed when I saw an earlier version at the tiny
Menier Chocolate Factory in London in 2005."
Initiating her review with a reassuring, "Fear not. It's still magic,"
Newsday's
Linda Winer offers a mostly favorable assessment: "Whatever the differences -- a few even better, a few not -- this new
Sunday is heart-thumpingly true to the mother lode....The result is a work of art about the making of art, an intimate piece of effortless musical audacity -- and a great bittersweet love story -- that remains among the peak theater experiences of my life....Ultimately, this is nothing less than an unpretentious art-history lesson, a thoughtfully conservative message about the need for order in art. It is also a close-to-the-bone consideration of art's toll on a human being, an inspirational message about the need for people to connect and to move on."
Urging readers to take in the show's "unmissably innovative piece of musical staging,"
New York Post's
Clive Barnes offers three stars: "The results, built into the designs by David Farley and the lighting by
Ken Billington, and based on pointillist Georges Seurat's iconic painting, "
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte," is one of the most visually amazing shows ever to reach Broadway. So far as geek wizardry goes, Buntrock and his team of animators, led by Timothy Bird, have possibly reinvented the Broadway wheel.... So far, so good. Then almost total collapse. The second act -- set in 1984 -- unfortunately finds George's great-grandson in the modish American art world, fighting for the patrons and subsidies to finance his own clearly pretentious style of visual art. The story now drifts off into highfalutin fatuity....Clever, but the act is also boring and pompous."
Allowing that this revival is "accomplished enough," Bloomberg's
John Simon delivers perhaps the most sour note: "The James Lapine book is extremely clever, Stephen Sondheim's score even more so. Unfortunately, clever and good are not quite identical.... I found the
original 1984 Broadway production, with scenery by
Tony Straiges and orchestrations by
Michael Starobin, slightly more compelling than this revival....My real problem, finally, is that the songs, though generally impressive, are more apt than appealing, more concert hall than Broadway. It is a musical with rather more mind than heart."
With all the critical raves, even
from me, could this
Sunday In The Park With George possibly be granted an extension beyond June 1? Stay tuned.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.
Related Stories:
Sunday In The Park With George (The SOB Review) (February 22, 2008)
Sunday Opens Thursday Night (February 21, 2008)
Show Deals: Breaking The Code (February 10, 2008)
Looking Forward: The SOB Top Five (January 2, 2008)
Sunday In The Park With Daniel And Jenna (May 7, 2007)
"Sunday" In Studio 54 With Roundabout (February 23, 2007)
Is It Just Me, Or...(Part II) (February 21, 2007)
Sunday At The Grosvenor House With Laurence (February 19, 2007)
Which British Hits Will Be Broadway-Bound? (September 20, 2006)
Sunday in the Park With George Revival Opens in London's West End (May 23, 2006)
Labels: Broadway, Critics' Capsule, Daniel Evans, James Lapine, Jenna Russell, Mary Beth Piel, Musical, Revival, Roundabout Theatre, Sam Buntrock, Stephen Sondheim, Sunday In The Park With George
Sunday In The Park With George (The SOB Review) – Roundabout Theatre Company, Studio 54, New York, NY
***1/2 (out of ****)Art isn't easy.
But in the hands of director
Sam Buntrock, an exquisite theatrical masterpiece literally comes to life, bit by dazzling bit, in the stunning revival of
Stephen Sondheim and
James Lapine's
Sunday In The Park With George.
In the first Broadway revival of this classic, now playing in the
Roundabout Theatre Company's
Studio 54 -- a less than optimum venue for the production, which I'll get into another time -- Buntrock's ingenious staging begins with a blank canvas, courtesy of
David Farley's colorless set design, effectively awash in white lighting by
Ken Billington.
But before long, the canvas takes on a life of its own, and it isn't simply because all of its inhabitants (played by a stellar cast) are suddenly abounding with vitality. Here, every minor detail is a major decision.
When Buntrock first staged this show in 2006 at London's tiny
Menier Chocolate Factory, necessity really became the show's mother of invention. Strapped for cash, Buntrock turned to
Tim Bird and
The Knifedge Creative Network to fill in the blanks with an enthralling, radiant projection design that is unequivocally the true star of this musical, making it a gorgeous work of art worthy of a great master.
And speaking of such a master,
Sunday In The Park With George is, of course, a fictionalized account of the painstaking, lonely artistic process undertaken by neo-impressionist
Georges-Pierre Seurat in creating his pointillistic painting "
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte." While the photo above doesn't do it justice, Seurat relied on the right light to blend different colors together, placing perhaps little hues of blue among slight dabs of red to make it appear violet from afar.
The fictionalized aspects of this musical focus on George's interaction, or lack thereof, with each of the subjects in the painting.
Daniel Evans imbues his George with all the manic, single-minded discipline one would expect from a dedicated artist, whether it's his accentuated devotion to "Color And Light":
Red red red red
Red red orange
Red red orange
Orange pick up blue
Pick up red
Pick up orange
From the blue-green blue-green
Blue-green circle
On the violet diagonal
or his becoming so absorbed in the world he's creating that he prefers it to the real thing -- a place that includes his long-neglected mother (
Mary Beth Peil) and Dot, played by an astounding
Jenna Russell in an impish, yet heartbreaking performance as George's simple-minded and attention-starved muse.
The artist seemingly remains unmoved, even after learning that he's fathered Marie, a child bound for America. In fact, the moment that moved me the most was watching the clammy white, luminescent Piel sitting stoically in a haunting display of dignified sorrow as her son steals away her chance to know her only grandchild -- ironic given the incredibly enduring relationship between the George of Act Two and his own Grandmother Marie, who was the same baby that had been stolen away to America.
The first act climaxes with the entire production's pièce de résistance, an apex in which George puts it all together in a brilliant and touching finish as the actors recreate the famous work of art.
It may sound like I'm quibbling here, but the show's second act doesn't quite, well, connect. While still engrossing, it doesn't quite provide the intense kind of emotional tug I'd expected as Marie's grandson George faces many of the same challenges as his supposed great grandfather. Yet it's during this act that Sondheim's memorable score wins the day and eventually helps elevate it to a glorious conclusion.
As
noted at the beginning of the year,
Sunday In The Park With George was one of the top five stage productions I most eagerly anticipated for 2008. While I missed it in London, it was certainly well worth the wait to finally see what is unmistakably a great piece of art.
Sunday In The Park With George is scheduled to run at Studio 54 through June 1.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:Sunday Opens Thursday Night (February 21, 2008)
Show Deals: Breaking The Code (February 10, 2008)
Looking Forward: The SOB Top Five (January 2, 2008)
Sunday In The Park With Daniel And Jenna (May 7, 2007)
"Sunday" In Studio 54 With Roundabout (February 23, 2007)
Is It Just Me, Or...(Part II) (February 21, 2007)
Sunday At The Grosvenor House With Laurence (February 19, 2007)
Which British Hits Will Be Broadway-Bound? (September 20, 2006)
Sunday in the Park With George Revival Opens in London's West End (May 23, 2006)
Labels: Broadway, Daniel Evans, James Lapine, Jenna Russell, Mary Beth Piel, Musical, Revival, Roundabout Theatre, Sam Buntrock, Stephen Sondheim, Sunday In The Park With George, The SOB Review
Sunday Opens Thursday NightThis evening, the first full-blown Broadway revival
Stephen Sondheim and
James Lapine's musical
Sunday In The Park With George opens at Roundabout Theatre Company's
Studio 54 under the direction of
Sam Buntrock.
It was Buntrock who in 2006 famously brought the tuner back to life in the fledgling little London theatre known as the
Menier Chocolate Factory, prior to it being whisked away to the West End. There, it dominated the Olivier Awards a year ago Monday, winning five awards, including for Outstanding Musical Production, Best Actor in a Musical (
Daniel Evans) and Best Actress in a Musical (
Jenna Russell).
Now, Buntrock has brought Evans and Russell stateside to cast their spell on the Great White Way's landscape in the first real revival of the beloved show about the labor of love and art.
The cast features many Broadway veterans like
Michael Cumpsty,
Jessica Molaskey,
Mary Beth Peil and
Ed Dixon, along with a couple who know their way around Sondheim revivals:
Anne L. Nathan (Emma Goldman in
Assassins),
Alexander Gemignani (John Hinkley in
Assassins and Beadle in
Sweeney Todd).
The
first Broadway production of
Sunday In The Park With George played the
Booth Theatre for a total of 604 performances, opening on May 2, 1984. Directed by Lapine, the show starred
Mandy Patinkin as George/George and
Bernadette Peters as Dot/Marie. While that
Sunday would fail to win any major Tony Awards (winning only Best Scenic Design for
Tony Straiges and Best Lighting Design for
Richard Nelson), losing out to the year's big winner
La Cage Aux Folles, it would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Here's a taste of irony. Menier is now restaging
La Cage Aux Folles in a sold-out run starring
Douglas Hodge, one of Russell's co-stars from the recent London hit revival of
Guys And Dolls. How's that for putting it together, bit by sweet delicious bit?
With all eyes now focused squarely on Studio 54, will Buntrock's magic be heralded anew? Find out tomorrow as I not only provide my critics' capsule, but also my own SOB Review.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:Show Deals: Breaking The Code (February 10, 2008)
Looking Forward: The SOB Top Five (January 2, 2008)
Sunday In The Park With Daniel And Jenna (May 7, 2007)
"Sunday" In Studio 54 With Roundabout (February 23, 2007)
Is It Just Me, Or...(Part II) (February 21, 2007)
Sunday At The Grosvenor House With Laurence (February 19, 2007)
Which British Hits Will Be Broadway-Bound? (September 20, 2006)
Sunday in the Park With George Revival Opens in London's West End (May 23, 2006)
Labels: Broadway, Daniel Evans, James Lapine, Jenna Russell, Menier Chocolate Factory, Musical, Opening Night, Revival, Roundabout Theatre, Sam Buntrock, Stephen Sondheim, Sunday In The Park With George
