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Though Georges Seurat is the central character in Sunday in the Park with George (Lyttelton) the real hero of this ambitious Broadway musical isn't the innovative pointilliste painter who died in Paris at the age of 31, but its composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim.
Indeed, an equally appropriate title for this Pulitzer prize-winner might be Sunday in the Park with Steve resonating as it does, from first note to last, with Sondheim's personal creative credo. "Why keep changing?" a character called Jules asks the trail-blazing Seurat. "Because I do not work for your approval," comes the reply.
On another occasion we're informed that "work is what you do for others, art is what you do for yourself." And although the lines were written not by Sondheim but by his librettist, James Lapine, they echo the composer's fearless approach to his craft.
And "fearless" it certainly is. For with shows such as Sweeney Todd, Pacific Overtures and Into the Woods (which London will see this summer) Sondheim has calculatedly edged his art away from mainstream Broadway commercialism into more rarefied territory.
True, on a first or even second hearing, you won't come away from Sunday in the Park whistling the tunes - even though they do exist. You have to work at them - thus reinforcing the show's message that "art isn't easy."
What Sondheim and Lapine are endeavouring to do here is dramatise the pain and commitment that goes into the creative process - quite a subject for a musical!
Their inspiration comes from Seurat's great painting La Grand Jatte which depicts a group of Parisiennes relaxing on their day off. Who are they? Why are none of them looking at each other? And what about the canvas's one missing character - the artist himself?
Act One attempts (with a clever musical evocation of Seurat's pointilliste style) to provide the answers and climaxes in a thrilling and visually breathtaking reconstruction of the familiar masterpiece.
The second act, set 100 years later, involves Seurat's fictional great-grandson - an American "performance" sculptor who, like his celebrated ancestor, is also in the throes of creative angst.
The show ends with his visit to Paris and the island of La Grande Jatte where Seurat's mistress Dot (first introduced in Act One) materialises in order to help the young artist through his "block".
Philip Quast plays the two Georges, but with limited success. Though vocally secure, he fails almost completely to convey the edgy, self-destructive, manic obsessiveness of Seurat. Only in Act Two does he begin to make palpable the creative artist's frustration.
Maria Friedman (as Dot) doesn't always give Sondheim's dazzling lyrics their due, but she has a splendid voice and launched the evening in bracing style with the title number. The rest of the cast - including Nyree Dawn Proter, Sheila Ballantine and Gary Raymond - are fine.
© The Express
