Iconic Outings: “Sunday in the Park with George” at the Cape Rep Theatre

Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for drama, one of only 10 musicals to do so, and its current production—staged at the Cape Rep Theater in Brewster—should be award-winning as well: this is an evening of light and music and absolute delight with a cast that is pitch-perfect and wonderfully engaging.

The first act is centered around obsessive visual artist Georges Seurat (played with a kind of amused intensity by Stanislav Przedlacki) as he creates his famous pointillist painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jette, the result of over 60 sketches the artist made over several years of work. He is working on these Sundays with his model and romantic partner Dot (Izzy Scampoli), who would like a little more of George himself and a little less of his artistic persona that takes her for granted.

The audience, however, is delighted to be privy to his sketches—and to the lives of the people who animate them—from the start. We’re immediately and throughout treated to a remarkable panoply of color and movement… and some truly exceptional singing.

We’re shown how Seurat’s obsession with his painting technique damages his relationships, yes; but those darker moments are offset by large, boisterous, often-comic scenes presented by the ensemble as they bring the many figures in the painting to vibrant life.

And then Act Two flashes forward a hundred years to another George, Seurat’s great-grandson, who is feeling stagnant after creating yet another light sculpture in an endless line of similar creations, this time in celebration of the Seurat painting itself. George’s ancestors encourage him to break through his blockage and try something new.

It is impossible for a review such as this to honor everyone in the cast as well as the extraordinary artistic and production staff and musicians, and I write that with true regret, because there is no false note, either literally or figuratively, anywhere in this production. Everyone in the painting is brought to imaginative life: an American couple, a boatman, giggling girls and impassive soldiers, an elderly woman and her companion, aspiring artists, and more: it’s a painting taking shape and thought and breath before our eyes. In skillful director Art Devine’s more than capable hands, the story is told intimately and simultaneously universally in such a way that, oddly enough, everyone in the audience feels seen and heard though one or another of these middle-class Parisian personas of another era.

Seurat’s obsession around manipulating light in a way artists of his time never considered (nor even recognized) is contained in his mantra—order, tension, harmony, design, balance, composition, color, and light—a mantra supported both by Keith Trux’s magical lighting effects and by the defensive response to it by contemporary artists (amalgamated into the character “Jules”—played by Nick Nudler—as he drawls about Seurat’s “density without intensity”).

At the risk of alienating some of my readers, I’ll say this: I’m not a huge Sondheim fan, but this is absolutely the production that best showcases his style. Sunday marked the beginning of concept musicals, and it (ironically) lends the story more realism and naturalism than book musicals ever could (though I still stand by my favorite-ever musical, Camelot).

I have to list everyone here, just to acknowledge their brilliance: Przedlacki, Scampoli (and oh-my-God her voice!) and Nudler are joined by Wendy Watson, Ari Lew, Holly Hansen, Brian Lore Evans, Caroly Williams, Alex Mai Murray, Ian Hamilton, Gemma Macbride, Zoey MacBride (on opening night), Nell Hamilton, Sam Billman, Anthony Teixeira, and Haily Deltano. Just pitch- and picture-perfect, every one of them. Cape Rep has a solid and deserved reputation for attracting some of the finest vocal actors in the region, and this production in celebration of the theater’s 40^th anniversary doesn’t disappoint.

The band includes Susan Goldberg (bass), Ben Colgan (keyboard), Chris Santos (percussion), and Scott Storr (piano, also the musical director—big kudos there). Ellen Rousseau’s set design is as always amazing, as are Robin McLaughlin’s costumes.

This production features a lot to compliment—but at its core, it’s just a lot of fun. Go see it—and enjoy your… Sunday in the park with M. Seurat & Co.

review by Jeannette de Beauvoir

images by Bob Tucker/Focalpoint Studio