Sunday In The Park With George

DVD, 120 minutes, BRANDMAN PRODUCTIONS

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by George Seurat is one of the great paintings of the world, and in "Sunday In The Park With George", book writer James Lapine and composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim bring a story based on the work brilliantly to life. While the painting depicts people gathered on an island in the Seine, the musical goes beyond simply describing their lives. It is an exploration of art, of love, of commitment. Seurat connected dots to create images; Lapine and Sondheim use connection as the heart of all our relationships. "Connect", the artist George tells himself in the climactic moment of "Sunday In The Park With George". Connect. All around him, his life is in shambles. Dot, his mistress and model, is leaving for America with Louis, the baker. His mother complains that she was never able to get through to him. The other Parisians on the island of Grande Jatte in the middle of the Seine are fighting and bickering. In a desperate attempt to bring sense into this chaos, George commands everyone: Order... Design... Tension... Balance... Harmony... Slowly, but deliberately, each of the Sunday afternoon park-goers who have been his models - the soldiers and the shopkeepers, the boatman and the baker, and, most especially, Dot - takes a designated place. The glorious depiction of George Seurat's mammoth painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" comes to life "by the cool, blue triangular water on the soft, green elliptical grass." The characters are united, but, significantly, George is apart downstage, the artist alone with his work, trying to connect. Of course, connecting is just what Seurat was doing in his paintings. Inspired by how threads in a carpet became flowers in the eyes of the beholder, Seurat chose to use dots (blots in the case of "Grande Jatte"). Different colors would fuse, creating a pointillist view of life. In one song in Sunday, George sings that "what the eye arranges is what is beautiful." The theme of connection - and, therefore, of relationships and commitment - runs through much of Stephen Sondheim's works. Interviewed after the opening of Company, he said: "...to be alone is impossible; to commit is to live, and not to commit is to be dead." In Company, Bobby is, like George, the outsider; he visits married couples but has difficulty "being alive." In Follies and A Little Night Music, couples try to disentangle unhappy relationships. In Merrily We Roll Along, Into the Woods and Assassins, characters try to connect with one another. The theme of connection is no more clear than in Sunday In The Park, and it was apparently the theme from the very beginning. Sondheim has said that when he and James Lapine, who would write the book and direct, were considering ideas for a new show, Lapine pointed out all the characters in "Grande Jatte" but noted that the main character was missing: the artist. "Once he said that, I knew that there was a real play there," Sondheim said. Considering that this was Sondheim and Lapine, the play would not be simply the story of an artist painting a picture. While each of the characters in the painting is given life and identity, Sunday In The Park centers on the life of an artist. Always sketching what he sees (even dogs), George is so consumed by his work that he separates himself from others: "...you watch the rest of the world from a window while you finish the hat." Dot, in love with George, attempts to have a relationship that goes beyond modeling. George, however, insists that she accept him as he is - "I am what I do" - and Dot, pregnant with George's child, is left with Louis. Although the baker drinks a bit and blinks a bit, "Louis makes a connection." George, she says, is complete by himself. The George of the first act died alone and without relationships, and his great-grandson, the George of the second act, is also a compulsive artist. Divorced, he is turning out an endless.