Michelle Larson
Kate Mann as Dot and Thomas J. Kasdorf as George in Middleton Players Theatre's production of "Sunday in the Park with George."
At the opening of Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, the 19th century pointillist painter George Seurat enters an empty stage and takes a moment to look around. He marvels at his task as an artist: “White, a blank page or canvas. The challenge: bring order to the whole, through design, composition, tension, balance, light and harmony.” In Middleton Players Theatre’s musical meditation on the emotional toll of art on its creators, audiences are treated to the inner workings of an artist’s mind. Painted skillfully on the stage of the Middleton Performing Arts Center (through July 3) this is a fine production of a complex, non-traditional musical that some credit as being as groundbreaking as the painting it’s based on.
In Sunday in the Park with George, the first act explores the relationship between George Seurat and his model, lover and muse Dot. Single-minded in his pursuit of capturing the shimmering light of an everyday scene in a park near the water, Seurat prioritizes his all consuming art over human interactions of any kind. He is discouraged by his lack of commercial or critical success — he struggles even to get his pieces shown publicly. In the process he alienates his lover and refuses to acknowledge the daughter that resulted from their relationship.
The second act skips ahead 100 years to the 1980s, where Seurat’s great-grandson George is encountering his own difficulties succeeding in the art world. Discouraged by the energy it takes to schmooze with funders, woo critics, and create work that is both original and personally fulfilling, George ultimately goes back to the park where his famous namesake painted an iconic work looking for inspiration.
In the Seurat painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte," the picture is filled with many figures, but known for only two: the woman in purple holding a parasol in the foreground and the painter, who created an entirely new and fascinating form of visual art. Similarly, there are many supporting characters in the musical, but only two whose stories draw the audience in: the artist (Seurat in Act I and his great grandson George in Act II ) and the model and muse (Dot). Fortunately the performances of these roles, by Thomas Kasdorf and Kate Mann, are extremely strong and beautifully affecting. Both actors also have gorgeous voices that perfectly fit the musical demands of each part, along with the musical dexterity to master Sondheim’s often challenging and complicated score.
Mann brings a bittersweet quality to Dot, knowing that her love and devotion to Seurat will never be reciprocated in the way she would like. Therefore the duet “We Do Not Belong Together” is more a sad acknowledgement of their situation than an accusation. A century later, her reunion with George through his grandson in the second act is especially satisfying, in that both her happiness and her hard-earned wisdom allow her to gently urge the young artist to “Move On,” another gorgeous duet.
Cold and distant in the first act as Seurat, Kasdorf explodes in the second act as a modern day artist in search of the passion to create. His frantic “Putting it Together” was especially impressive, a great opportunity for the actor to let out all of the insecurities and tensions that his earlier character could not expose.
Directed capably by Matt Starika-Jolivet, the production shines brightest when the cast is “put together” to sing as an ensemble, as they do in “Sunday” which closes each act. Supporting characters have universally good singing voices that blend well to fill the auditorium. With no choreography to speak of, the show occasionally feels slow and static, but that allows the audience to concentrate on the music and lyrics, which are much more difficult to take in on a first hearing than typical musicals.
Some of the set pieces and costumes are beautiful, (loaned from Milwaukee’s Skylight Theatre,) others look amateurish in comparison. But taken together, Middleton Players Theatre succeeds in presenting this difficult musical about the anguish, the vision and the passion of artists who must also find a way to exist in the everyday world. Shows this weekend are at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, June 25-26.
