“White, a blank page or canvas. The challenge – bring order to the whole, through design, composition, tension, balance, light and harmony,” says George, standing alone on stage, opening the second to last show of Sunday in the Park with George.
The cast performance is nearly perfect during Douglas C. Wager’s revived production of the play at Temple University’s Tomlinson Theater, running between February 21 and February 28. Nearly perfect.
Sunday in the Park with George is a theatrical musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine, first released in 1984. The 1985Pulitzer Prize winner for dramais inspired by Georges Seurat, a French pointillist painter. The story follows the main character’s development of one of his masterpieces finished in 1884 — A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, and the main character’s great-grandson, a contemporary artist also named George.
Following the opening monologue, the two main characters — George (JJ Vavrik) and Dot (Maddie Shea), George’s mistress — engage in their first duet, revealing not only the mechanics of their relationship, but also George’s immense concentration on painting Dot in the park early on Sunday morning.
Dot’s attitude and spirit, and George’s lack of ability to show emotions cause both funny and heartbreaking moments, making the plot very relatable.
JJ Vavrik doesn’t only lack the ability to express feelings, though. If only he kept reciting instead of singing, the world would be a better place. Thank heavens (and the playscript), most of the songs are saved by duets with Dot.
And not only saved.
Shea is the star of the show, covering not only for Vavrik’s unimpressive singing with her beautiful and goosebumps-causing voice, but also for the poorly accompanied songs in the first place. The animated expressions on her face, showing variety of emotions throughout the play, are the highlight of the show.
When not singing, Vavrik is also doing an excellent job, making me believe that he might actually be a notoriously-distracted artist, with zero patience for anything else, in real life.
Wasn’t it for the moments when the orchestra drowns the voices of the actors on stage, there would not be much reproach against the first act..
The show is entertaining thus far. It takes 10 minutes into the play for the actors to reveal that we are in Paris of the late 19th century, but that possible confusion does not take away from the play, the beautiful costumes and brilliant lighting production that slowly reveals George’s painting on the screen in the back of the stage, progressing alongside the plot.
If there is a single notable side role, it is Frieda the cook (Emily Carbone), a sarcastic character with long legs, strong German accent and mischievous desires.
The closing scene makes me nearly sad that the first part is over.
The opening of the second act brings the audience right back into George’s painting, revealing the possible stories behind each painted characters in the funniest way possible.
And then, out of nowhere, the audience is ripped out of that painting and without warning, thrown into epileptic’s worst nightmare. Uncontrollably flashing lights, cloud of fog rolling across the stage and fast-forward a hundred years, I feel like I possibly blinked too hard and reappeared in a different theater hall.
Vavrik now embodies the three-generations younger George, and Shea becomes his grandmother Marie – Dot’s daughter.
The first and second act tie together, I get it, yet I still find everything that comes after the abrupt time-travel being an unnecessary addition, distracting me from the deep impression the first act left in me. Most dialogues at this point only fill the remaining stage time, instead of adding anything meaningful to the at-this-point-dying plot.
It is the play’s fault, not the actors’, that I all I wish for is the end of my misery. Unfortunately, this business is not a wish-granting factory.
Maybe the idea of a time-jump was revolutionary in 1984, but in Philadelphia of 2019 the second act killed all the emotions the first act awakened. It’s a shame because the cast was great.