| Company of 35 Musicians & Singers for Sondheim Masterwork |
At RWCMD |
| Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama- “Sunday in the Park with George” , Sherman Theatre , July 14, 2022 |
A GUIDE TO THE SEQUENCE "AT RWCMD" CAN BE SEEN BELOW 4TH APRIL 2009The Stephen Sondheim Society met on 1st May for a mix of panel discussion, master class and song recital. Julian Ovenden said that out of all the Stephen Sondheim works “Sunday in the Park with George” was his favourite. In fact, he said, it was probably his favourite art-work of all time. A concert in the Royal Albert Hall to celebrate Sondheim's eightieth birthday ended with the finale of “Sunday in the Park with George”. Daniel Evans took the lead as Georges Seurat and spoke the words from James Lapine's book: “Design. Tension. Balance. Harmony.” The last twenty minutes of the score are the most sublime ever to be composed for musical theatre. They are given full justice by the company from the Royal College. In recent years the repertoire of the RWCMD has included “Company”, “Into the Woods” and “Merrily We Roll Along.” “Sunday in the Park with George” is an inspired selection for the post-pandemic era. No musical celebrates in the same way the joy that is to be had in the sheer close-up-ness of social mingling. Both acts end with the same words sung by the whole company: “People strolling through the trees Of a small suburban park On an ordinary Sunday.” Premiered in 1984 it marked an important stage in Sondheim's oeuvre. It was the first time the composer, born 1930, worked with a younger writer, James Lapine, born 1949. Of his prior collaboration with John Weidman Sondheim wrote: "we are Broadway babies. We think in terms of the well-made play, in which intention leads to action leads to consequence leads to intention and so on- our thinking is linear.” With Lapine it altered: “The off-Broadway playwrights of the sixties and their offspring, like Lapine, lean toward lateral thinking, toward intuition, rather than structural logic. They are less interested in plot than in atmosphere and subtext, more in intimation than in statement. This often results in vagueness, masquerading as suggestiveness and pretension being mistaken for whimsy or innovation, but it also sometimes results in freshness and surprise.” The result is also evident in the show's origins. After the calamitous fate of “Merrily We Roll Along” it did not have its origins in commercial theatre. It was performed in a non-profit theatre with an audience made up of subscribers. Most of the first run consisted only of the first act. "I found myself writing with more formal looseness", Sondheim wrote in his memoir, "than I had before, allowing songs to become fragmentary, like musicalised snatches of dialogue, but avoiding the static verbosity of recitative.” Sondheim spoke in later life about the time of estrangement from intimacy. The Seurat on stage, driven in art, is not high in sympathy. Seurat in life painted for ten hours a day, six days a week. The family background was not warm. Fellow artist Paul Signac described a visit. Father Chrysostome-Antoine Seurat had lost an arm in a hunting accident and had a mechanical substitute. Signac: "at mealtimes he screwed knives and forks into the end of this arm, which enabled him to carve legs of mutton, fillets, poultry and game with speed, verve even. He positively juggled with these sharply pointed weapons, and when I was sitting next to him, I positively feared for my eyes.” In Signac's studio at social gatherings Seurat kept silence unless asked a direct question. When Emile Verhaeren met him in the summer of 1886 he recalled: “we had to break a lot of ice before we were able to get through to one another.” Seurat's mother only learned about his lover and child two days before his death. This is conveyed in the lyrics. On the emotions of the artist: “George sees the dark George feels afraid George looks within George is adrift.” The last duet is titled “Move On”: “I want to move on I want to explore the light I want to know how to get through Through to something new Something of my own.” The finale is a celebration of both the scene on the banks of the Seine and the painting that it inspires. “Sunday, by the blue purple yellow red water On the green purple yellow red grass Let us pass through our perfect park Pausing on a Sunday By the cool blue triangular water On the soft green elliptical grass...” Within the Sherman seat B1 misleads. It is in fact the front row with an immense field of vision on offer. The orchestrations are complex and difficult. The pit with its thirteen musicians in full view give the music a reality in its making. “Sunday in the Park with George” requires a design where elements of the Grand Jatte painting assemble. The credits for the company offstage runs to forty-six across set, stage management and lighting. The ensemble- design, actors, musicians, costume- is rich in visual scale. It is a demanding score and the lead actors enunciate strongly. Freya Barrass has the challenge of singing an invalid Marie in a wheelchair. Other lead roles are Thomas Blytheway as George 1, Dinora Cabral as Dot, Peter Lawrence as the boatman, Bebhinn Hunt-Sheridan as Celeste 1, Gabriela Toloi as Celeste 2, Harry Lynn as George 2 with a swagger in up-town Manhattan. But the glory is the composite singing from all twenty-one. Other credits for this considerable night out: Sarah Tipple director, Struan Leslie movement director, Barnaby Southgate musical director * * * * Postscript 1: On 29th May Susanna Clapp's weekly Observer review included Indhu Rubasingham’s remarkable direction of “the Father and the Assassin” by Anupama Chandrasekhar. She included: “Gesture dances throughout, giving each event a distinctive look and movement. I have never seen hands move so expressively: twisting, jabbing, opening and closing like shells in water, sometimes emphasising, sometimes arguing with a speaker’s words. Was there a special hand choreographer?” It is good when theatre professionals enter a public arena. Struan Leslie contributed a lucid 270-word response and explanation, well worth the reading. * * * * Postscript 2: The review of 2nd June recommended that the Sherman adopt a quality process of benchmarking with comparable theatres. As it happens a musical also plays at the Birmingham Rep this month. Its promotion runs: “A feel-good Caribbean calypso musical” with a quotation. “An exuberant night amid palm trees”. The production is a musicalisation of Mustapha Matura’s transposition of “the Playboy Of The World” to the Caribbean.” The promotion exudes joyfulness. “...a toe-tapping, finger-snapping score firmly rooted in the Caribbean. In Peggy’s rum bar in sleepy Mayaro village, a mysterious stranger stumbles in out of the darkness. With a voice like honey he tantalises the women and unnerves the men....a tremendous cast and sweet duets... witty, vibrant and joyful new musical.” The website for “Sunday in the Park with George” includes: “this show contains violent scenes, images and references to war, reference to rape and/or sexual assault, reference to domestic violence and strong Language.” The prospective audience member receives an email to the same effect. It is ridiculous. It is not even literate with that capital “L” for “language.” As a way to characterise "Sunday in the Park with George" it is inane. The signals that now emanate from the Sherman are gaining in consistency, the contours of the Murphy era becoming clearer. |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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