“Sunday in the Park with George”
Freud Playhouse
Jan. 30 through Feb. 11
“Sunday in the Park with George” can be likened to such things as peanut butter and ham sandwiches, skydiving on acid or communism: a good idea in theory, but not so much in practical application.
Set in late 1880s France, the play’s premise follows painter Georges (“George”) Seurat (Manoel Felciano) as he attempts to create what will ultimately become his most prominent work, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.”
Unfortunately for George, “ultimately” becomes the operative word, as his pointillist style of painting ““ a post-impressionist style in which artists apply paint in small dots ““ fails to garner much immediate enthusiasm from the public.
This lack of enthusiasm isn’t the end of George’s struggles. He also has to reconcile the conflict of the subjects of his paintings, the town’s inhabitants, between how they are with how he wants to portray them.
This seems to be a simple enough plot, but here’s where things get weird: The structure of the play itself is modeled after Seurat’s pointillist style, broken up into fragmented scenes which, when taken in isolation, really don’t bear much significance, much like the tiny individual dots in the painting.
Stepping back from the painting should reveal that the dots merge together into an image. No such cohesion really seems to happen in the play, however.
Though the individual bits are captivating enough, there really doesn’t appear to be much meaning behind the whole.
Despite Kelli O’Hara’s lovable character, Dot, and her attempts to retain the affections of George when he is too enraptured with his painting to notice her, their relationship ultimately comes off as bland and meaningless. It seems almost dichotomous that the thing that keeps George from loving Dot is his obsession with his work, an obsession which revolves around capturing humanity ““ a thing which he seems only to observe from the safety of his sketches rather than in reality.
Additionally, it’s hard to feel sorry for Dot, since it’s George’s peculiarities that attract her to him in the first place. “Artists are bizarre, fixed and cold,” she says during the song “Sunday in the Park with George.” No one seemed to ask, then, why she wanted him to change when it was that very quality that attracted her to him.
The shortcomings of “Sunday” appear to be in the direction. When asked what qualified him to direct “Sunday in the Park with George,” Jason Alexander replied, “I would never have imagined that I was.” Though said in a jocular tone, Alexander turned out to be more right than he likely expected.
It was difficult to distill any specific theme from the play, making it equally hard to sympathize with any of the characters in it.
During the attempted heart-wrenching scenes, such as “Children and Art,” there were many moments when, despite multiple efforts to squish out a tear or two, it remained impossible to do anything more than wonder who these characters were and why the audience was supposed to care about them.
Nevertheless, “Sunday” gets points for ingenuity.
When a sudden shift occurs halfway through the play that jolts the audience out of France and into a modern-day art show, featuring lasers and other strange effects that made me wonder if the $2 brownie I bought at intermission was laced with more than just nuts, it became evident that the musical was taking a risk in an art form that has for the most part become fairly pedestrian.
Another strong point came from the acting. Felciano did a satisfactory job pulling off the aloof artist, and O’Hara’s wild gamut of facial expressions and vocal range was the focal point of the show.
The townspeople proved entertaining, if not vaguely annoying as well. The two town gossips, both named Celeste, provided a sort of familiar charm in their obvious jokes and generally goofy antics.
Overall, “Sunday” began as a good idea that unfortunately didn’t pan out. Perhaps, like Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” the public simply isn’t ready.