Sunday in the Park with George: art isn't easy but is thrilling when it succeeds
08 Mar 2020

by Drew Rowsome -Photos by Dahlia Katz

For an event "somewhere between a staged concert and a full production," Eclipse Theatre Company's Sunday in the Park with George is a sumptuous experience. Stephen Sondheim's music is gorgeous enough, and in this case extremely well sung, to be riveting with a stand-and-sing staging, but this Sunday in the Park with George is always in motion and deliciously intimate. And conceptual flourishes have been layered and layered without disturbing the flow of the story. If you want to think, there is a lot to digest, but if you just want to sink back and lean into a luxurious musical theatre experience, it unfolds right before your eyes and ears.

Instead of a proscenium theatre, we are ushered upstairs in the Old Jam Factory to a loft space that echoes every re-purposed seat-of-the-pants artist run warehouse conversion, from the brick walls, aged wood and a sign on the floor saying "Hole. Do Not Step Here." The environment easily doubles as George's studio and, with a bit of imagination and lighting, the park where he sketches. At intermission a few paintings are hung and we are in the pretentious museum for the satirical second half. With the performers in character as various art vultures, the satire may have hit a bit too close to home on opening night as they mingled seamlessly with the networking and busy being seen theatre crowd.

Sondheim's score itself is structured conceptually with little bursts of song standing in for Georges Seurat's pointillism. Which adds to the tension as we wait for these great voices to launch into the soaring phrases that musical theatre convention demands, but every single person leaving the theatre was singing under their breath. The bursts are that catchy and enticing. Director Evan Tsitsias (I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change) and the cast have to contend with being eager to be sketched and immortalized as well as being sketches courtesy of the score. They must almost instantaneously become a two-dimensional character who then deepens into close to a three-dimensional character striving to be a two-dimensional representation in a work of art that hope to achieve three dimensions. Balancing between shorthand comedy and shtick gives an intriguing unevenness until the score coalesces and it all climaxes in stunning choral singing that, like Serrault's painting, creates a whole out of points of magic.

The stage space does have problems with sightlines and projection of vocals to all corners of the room, but more than compensates in intimacy. Tess Benger (Girls Like That) is able to sing in what appears to be a vulnerable whisper and draws us in with sly asides and a seemingly bottomless joy for life. She is magnetic, playful and utterly charming. Charlotte Moore (Spend Your Kids' Inheritance) stuns with her comic chops and a wistful and intense rendering of "Beautiful" that respects all of Sondheim's lyric levels with piercing insight while also being heartbreaking. Evan Buliung (Fun Home, The Audience) has an impossible role hampered by dated (1986) psychological insights in the score, but by applying an amiable charismatic charm and a flexible ringing voice, we understand, and collude with, his obsessions and also those who obsess over him. The character George may or may not be a great artist, but Buliung proves that he is.

Eric Craig (Wizard of Oz) and Tracy Michailidis (Mr Burns, a Post-Electric Play) provide great fun as backstabbers and gossips, and the large ensemble features Alten Wilmot, Bethany Monaghan, Jesse Drwiega and Ben Skipper in smaller roles that pop. Musical director Adam Sakiyama (Dr Silver) gets a near orchestral sound out of a five piece band and, more crucially, somehow has it support the unmiked vocals without overwhelming. The set design and costumes by Michelle Bon (The Nether) are deceptively simple but even they are conceptually apt in the choice of colour and creation of place. 

Because it is an "event" rather than a production, Sunday in the Park with George has a very short run and very limited seating. Sondheim fans (and who isn't?) should already have their tickets for a rare production of his most personal score (the song "Finishing the Hat" is also the title of the two volumes of his lyrical semi-memoir) and anyone new to Sondheim can gain an introduction to one of his more challenging works that is sure to seduce. At this point I planned to quote from the song "Putting It Together" with the hookline "Art isn't easy" to illustrate just what Eclipse Theatre has accomplished, but far better to listen on YouTube (even the Streisand version) or, better yet, take this opportunity to savour Buliung and this fine ensemble's stellar version.