There is so
much life in the essentially melancholy story line of Sondheim's
musical "Sunday in the Park with George." Including, perhaps, a story
of noble dedication and sacrifice. Or, perhaps, of the costs of such sacrifices.
Simply hearing a few phrases from "Maria" or "Some Day" can make
you want to cry if you know "West Side Story." The theme from the Franco
Zeffirelli film version of "Romeo and Juliet" produces a similar
emotion in me. Musical moments from "Carousel" or and from the
heart-break songs in "Les Miserables" have the same effect on those of
us who love those shows.
I don't have a simple word for the emotion
produced by the recurring theme in "Sunday in the Park with George," with
music and lyrics both by Stephen Sondheim, likely to prove one of enduring works for musical theater from
recent decades. Last weekend we saw the current production by the Huntington
Theatre Company.
How do you
create a musical about a painting?
The painting
by George Seurat (known to art history as a "pointillist") bears the
original title "Un dimanche apres-midi a I'lle de la Grande Jatte." It
depicts an "ordinary Sunday" in a Parisian "suburban park."
Sunday was the single day off in the miserable Victorian work week of the
latter 19th century, but the range of leisure time diversions by today's
standards was not wide. So people go to the park, and once there they complain
how hot it is.
The
painting stands out even in the incredibly prolific era of 19th century French
art as a masterpiece. It is filled with people and also with impersonality. It offers a
point of view on both the richness and the constraint of the life we urban dwellers live: an
unremarkable moment in the inner life of a socially respectable people spent in
a public space. This is my understanding, at least, of the point Sondheim is
making in a quoted remark in the Huntington Theatre's program (written by
Charles Haugland): "... you start speculating on why none of them are
looking at each other..." Contemporary subway trains can be just like
that. Every elevator ride as well.
The
painting is a big canvas. Seurat employed the technique, largely of his own invention,
of creating figures and backgrounds out of tiny dabs of unmixed color. Beside a
yellow dab, he places a yellow-orange one. The idea, Sondheim states, is to let
the eye mix the colors.
Sondheim's
comments do not explain why he chose the painting as the theme, and setting, of
his musical play. (I'm not sure such choices are explicable.) He credits the
writer of the play's 'book' (storyline), Jim Lapine, with this 'key observation'
on the painting:
"Of
course the main character's missing...The artist."
Who is
'George' in this musical play? He's the creator who refuses to "engage,"
as we say today, with the scene that he is recording.
He is
polite, but always to the point. The point is how to stand or sit. To hold the
neck up. To turn the head one way or another.
The plot
offered us in 'Sunday's' first act, the act that matters, is minimalist. In
other works Sondheim has characters major and minor running around, hiding from
each other, concealing stuff, revealing secrets at key moments. Here we have
George, whose major song sums up the meaning of his life, his character this way:
"I made a hat today."
It's
brilliant. He is his work. By telling himself to finish the hat -- all those
little, perfectly executed dabs -- he has been true to himself, but not to his
lover, his model, whom he has failed to take to the Follies that evening.
"We will go to the Follies tonight," he tells her in a rare personal
comment. But they don't.
Theirs is the
sort of affair in which one person does all the talking, and wonders alound what
the other person is thinking. Does he care? George is a person whom others talk
to, and some seek to define, but who resists all attempts to define him by the
simple expedient of addressing only the needs of his art. His lover is having
his child, but the artist doesn't claim the child -- or her. He allows her to
marry a baker instead.
Sondheim
explains the ways his musical composition mirrors Seurat's pointillist
technique of using pure colors and letting the eyes mix colors close to one
another on the color wheel. The composer takes a similar approach by alternating major and minor keys: "If
you listen to the alternation ... the alternation between a major third and
minor third, if you justapose them, is exactly like juxtaposing yellow with
yellow-orange or red with red-orange. "
It's a way
to evoke emotion in the listener, Sondheim says. "The ear blends
them," he states. "That little major/minor alternation... the ear
blends those two things and it comes to this unsettled, but very poignant
chord."
Poignant it
is. I can't think of any better word to describe the way the music affects you,
and stays with you. And of course, it also works because he matches the
lyrics so perfectly to the emotional space created by those alternations.
The result
is deeply, enduringly melancholy -- a word that includes beauty in its cluster
of shaded meanings.
I can't say
much for the second act of the show, which jumps a century ahead to our own
time and is said by Sondheim to mirror the structure of the first half, both
musically and narratively. This may be so, but compared to the first act, the
second feels forced and cliched. The narrative is predictable and the
characters trite. And there's no George, no model-mistress, no painting,
and the park is nothing like what it once was.
Even
without these narrative strengths, the music remains as affecting as it is in
the play's brilliant first half. By the end all I'm doing is listening to those
"little" alternations. They're all I know, and all I need to know.
The
Huntington Theater Company production continues through Oct. 16.
Here's the
link to the theater's site: www.huntingtontheatre.org
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