Review: Kokandy Productions’ ‘Sunday in the Park with George’ is a work of art

Director Derek Van Barham and Kokandy Productions stage another Stephen Sondheim masterwork — following their much-praised “Sweeney Todd” and “Into the Woods” — in the cramped basement space of the Chopin Theatre. This time, it’s a richly emotional, cleverly designed and musically vivid “Sunday in the Park with George,” about the creation of painter Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” the large neo-impressionist masterpiece that — so very lucky for us! — hangs a few miles away in the Art Institute.

This show premiered in 1984 and earned Sondheim and his collaborator James Lapine the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, a rarity for a musical. That said, this show about art underappreciated in its time lost out to “La Cage aux Folles” for most of the Tony Awards, including Best Original Score; no offense to the immortal “I Am What I Am,” but this was, shall we say, a memorable error. And if you have any doubt about that, by all means catch this version, where music director Nick Sula, helped by a six-member orchestra and a startlingly effective sound design by Matt Reich, achieve at key moments a truly immersive swelling of Sondheim’s gorgeous songs, in which each note frequently represents a brush stroke, or rather a dot or dab in Seurat’s pointillist approach to painting, all adding up to something far bigger and evocative.

Anchored by two beautifully performed lead performances from Kevin Webb and Missy Wise Vanderzee, the show foregrounds the rich inner lives of the central characters, giving dimension to the external and internal conflicts that drive the highly fictionalized story. Act I follows George and his mistress and model Dot (see what the creators did there?!) as they bicker and ultimately split (“We Do Not Belong Together”), all while George works toward completing an oversized work that will never sell during his lifetime but will be recognized as revolutionary in the bigger picture.

‘Sunday in the Park with George’

When: Through Nov. 1 Where: Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division St. Tickets: $55-66 Info: kokandyproductions.com Run time: 2 hours and 40 minutes with one intermission

Kevin Webb, Rachel Carreras, Lauren Miller and Danny Andrew Bennett star in Kokandy Productions’ revival of “Sunday in the Park with George.”

Evan Hanover

George and Dot’s mutual attraction here comes across strongly, but so does their incompatibility. Webb’s George isn’t just obsessed with his art. Here, and uniquely in my experience, we can see that painting brings him an inner joy, a quality that makes the character’s choices far more sympathetic. Vanderzee, also highly compelling, brings her own specific take on Dot: firmly grounded, non-conformist in her own right, confident from the start in what she needs.

Notably, Van Barham finds a way to make Act II — which can feel like a whole different show — seem far more of a natural continuation, even after it skips forward a hundred years to a 1980s art museum. He infuses this often static second act with the same emotional detail and precision, just focused on an artist who fears his best work may be behind him.

Now Webb’s George is a modern artist playing with color and light — like his namesake ancestor before him — but this time using technology. His artistic rut, exacerbated by his need to please funders, finds great expression in Van Barham’s staging of “Putting It Together,” in which Webb seems constantly about to fall off the edge of the canvas/stage.

His elderly grandmother Marie (Vanderzee again as the daughter of Act I’s George and Dot and, again, very down-to-Earth, although now, amusingly, quirkily dotty) understands she needs to help him “Move On,” a number that here, as always, comes across as deeply affecting.

“Sunday in the Park with George” (left to right) Z Moore, Rachel Carreras, Jack Saunders, Ella Carson, Emily Holland, Samantha Ringor, Abraham Shaw and Danny Andrew Bennett in Kokandy Productions’ revival of Sunday in the Park with George.

Evan Hanover

The overflowing creativity at work here begins early, when George’s opening lines proclaim, “White. A blank page or canvas.” In this version, with a set and lighting design by G “Max” Maxin IV, he describes the stage itself: a large, blank rectangular canvas, lying flat, raised a foot or so off the ground. As he summons the other characters who represent the ordinary visitors to a public Parisian park in the 1890s, George steps onto this canvas, which becomes the central playing area.

This is evocative in and of itself — emphasizing the ordering of chaos into art, and live theater as an art always in the process of creation. But the design concept also provides a giant payoff as Act I crescendos into its finale “Sunday.” Solving the problem that the confined space and in-the-round configuration don’t allow for a living re-creation of the Seurat painting, Van Barham finds a creative alternative to that and then amusingly begins Act II (“It’s Hot Up Here”) by stuffing nearly the entire cast of 14 onto that rectangular platform.

There are inconsistencies, unsurprising for a show with this size cast and variety of small subplots. But for every unfulfilled moment — the scenes involving the soldier, for example — there’s a surprisingly deep one, with a special call-out to actress Lauren Miller, so poignant as George’s nostalgic mother, who not only misremembers the past but laments the new construction she can see from her park bench. It will become the Eiffel Tower.

Indexed and credited by AIPROPX. Originating outlet: Chicago Sun-Times. Open at source →