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| Photo: Liz Lauren |
No matter how many monkeys you've got furiously typing away, I doubt "Sunday In The Park With George" could have been conceived and brought to life by anyone other than composer-lyricist, Stephen Sondheim. One might rightly say the same of any of Sondheim’s treasure trove of masterpieces, but “Sunday” nurses a uniquely soulful, highly personal wound – for your’s truly, anyhow – that “Sweeney Todd” and “A Little Night Music,” do not. “Sunday” is clarifying therapy for both the creator and his audience rather than a dramatized page-turner to energize the masses. Truly there's very little plot to speak of. And although many a naysayer will call it Sondheim’s coldest work, don’t be fooled by the absence of simplistic melodies and reiterated choruses. It is, in fact, his warmest.
The astoundingly intrusive 1984 musical, still as innovative and groundbreaking as ever, premiered half-finished at Off-Broadway's Playwrights Horizons during a stormy period of the celebrated composer's life – three years after the crushing flop that was "Merrily We Roll Along." "Merrily," another musical about artists and the folly of intent, ran a measly sixteen performances on Broadway. I've grown to appreciate it very much since watching a grainy old video at the Lincoln Center archives. Like “Sunday,” it's a piece whose virtues reside in the flaws. "Sunday"'s most major flaw and virtue being its uneven, contemporary second half.
Sondheim, at that point in his career, had certainly experienced his fair share of failure – “Pacific Overtures” didn’t go over so well at the box office either – but the demise of “Merrily,” also the end of his long-time collaboration with director Harold Prince, was a bigger setback. And Georges/George, the fictional and period-bending embodiment of nineteenth century French painter Georges Seurat, feels the same failure, self-consciousness, and paralyzing pressure that must have been plaguing the composer during “Merrily”’s immediate aftermath. Sondheim's lyrics, rhythmically ingenious as usual, are tellingly personal – “I’ve nothing to say… But nothing that’s not been said… I do not know where to go... I want to make things that count... Things that will be new... What am I to do?” – hearkening back to the companionship-challenged Bobby in "Company," but somehow with even littler discretion.
