KOKANDY GETS THE PICTURE

A splendid revival turns this cranky critic
into a dewy-eyed theatre kid again

“Work is what you do for others, Liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.”

In a sense, I guess it’s appropriate that Sunday in the Park with George, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Pulitzer-winning musical, should be staged in the basement theater of the Chopin Theatre. There’s nothing grand or stately about the space. It’s a cramped room with black walls. All the better to draw you into the platform that sits between its four enormous pillars (it must be a blast to block in here), their walls festooned with sketches and art concepts at various stages of realization. Off to one side sits a large empty frame. That’s mostly all there is to G “Max” Maxin IV’s minimalist set design. Approaching the space, the matte white of the platform gives it the appearance of a horizontally laid, unpainted canvas. A few props are scattered across the space, but the eye is repeatedly drawn to the large square of white in the center of the room, entirely appropriate for a show that opens with the line, “White. A blank page or canvas.”

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is the second large painting completed by Georges Seurat, a founder of Neo-Impressionism and the painter most closely associated with Pointillism. An enormous composition that took Seurat over two years to finish, the painting is of an idyllic Sunday afternoon in a park by the Seine. Eschewing the blending of paints, Seurat instead deployed millions of tiny dots of color in intricate patterns that resolve into images only when one steps back from the painting. This masterwork hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago, and once you’re done with the show, make a trip and see the real thing: it’s mind-blowing.

The musical begins on an afternoon in the park as George (Kevin Webb) makes a sketch of one of the figures who winds up in the final painting, his lover Dot (Missy Wise Vanderzee). It’s hot, and the dress Dot is wearing is itchy and uncomfortable. Dot complains about the heat, the clothing, the tedium of posing, and why she has to stand in the sun while George sits in the shade. But it might as well be a soliloquy because George is oblivious to her plaints. All that matters to him is the sketch. Soon the park starts to fill up with characters, all of whom eventually wind up in the painting.

Trying to explain the magic of the first act of Sunday in the Park with George is about as futile as trying to explain why a painting moves you. There isn’t a plot per se. George sketches; Dot kvetches. She drifts away and comes back. Exasperated by his indifference to her existence, she finally leaves him and finds another lover, a kind baker whom she marries and with whom she immigrates to the United States, leaving George behind.

Still, all George does is sketch. And paint. He can no more stop his hand from painting than he can stop his heart from beating or his lungs from breathing.

In “Finishing the Hat,” one of the most melancholic songs in the Sondheim canon (and that’s saying something), George sings about painting while watching the world go by from his window. Voices fade away in the distance, as does the woman who won’t wait for him because she knows “…that however you live, there’s a part of you always standing by, mapping out the sky.”

Webb’s phrasing of the last line of that song is markedly different from every other version that I’ve heard, including Mandy Patinkin’s original. “Look I made a hat… where there never was a hat” is always sung with a flourish, sometimes tinged with anger, sometimes with bitterness, but always laced with a soupçon of pride and arrogance. Not so here. Webb practically gasps out the line, his face wracked with grief. Dot, the love of his life, has left him, and George sings the song with the knowledge that this isolation and loneliness is his lot in life. In Act II, a character states that children and art are the only things in life that matter, but I’m not sure Webb’s George believes that. His line readings belie that interpretation. George would change for Dot if he could, but it is beyond him. This isn’t creation as a higher calling; it is not even creation as an addiction; it is creation as a compulsion.

Then there’s Vanderzee’s Dot. This Dot is no flibbertigibbet; Vanderzee gives her an unusually strong personality. Again, it’s not something I’ve seen in other iterations of the character. Dot may be uneducated (she’s teaching herself to write with a children’s grammar) and unworldly, but there’s a keen focus and quiet strength in her that centers the entire show. Vanderzee does this marvelous thing where she stands almost entirely still, her eyes shifting back and forth between the other characters, observing and evaluating. With George, though, she holds his gaze slightly longer than expected, forcing him to be the one to look away. It’s a crafty, fiercely intelligent, and altogether exquisite performance that completely changes the tenor of the show. Together, Webb and Vanderzee bring some serious emotional heft to the first act that’s missing from most productions of the show.

As is expected by now of any musical at Kokandy, the vocals are absolutely phenomenal. Not a note is out of place, not a line is oversung. Band leader Evelyn Ryan expertly conducts Sondheim’s complex, pointillistic score. This is director and choreographer Derek Van Barham’s and music director Nick Sula’s third Sondheim musical in the last few years at Kokandy, after critically adored productions of Into the Woods and Sweeney Todd, both starring Webb. Their sensibilities are clearly aligned with the material, and the staging and orchestrations are so creative that I’d have to write another several hundred words just to enumerate everything I love about it.

I don’t know what I expected from this Sunday in the Park with George, but a tremulous, vulnerable George and a resolute Dot was not it. These unusual interpretations of the characters carry over to Act II. If the first act of Sunday in the Park with George is perfect (you heard me: it’s perfect), the second is… a bit clunkier. The action shifts to the great-grandson of Seurat, also called George. George is the grandson of Marie, Dot and Seurat’s child from Act I, and is an artist as well, playing with light just like his great-granddaddy did. I’ve never particularly cared for the second act of Sunday, and I’m not sure if it was the afterglow of that exquisite first act here, or if it was more musical magic woven by Webb, Vanderzee, Van Barham, and Sula, but it worked for me. Webb’s and Vanderzee’s performances are shaded very differently in Act II (they’d have to be; they’re playing grandmother and grandson), but the core aspect of their performances is the same. Act II also boasts one of Sondheim’s most beautiful and underappreciated songs in “Children and Art” (I’ll fight anyone, including the ghost of Jerry Herman, who dares call it “unhummable”) and “Move On,” the lyrics of which should be inscribed over the entrance to every creative arts building in existence.

All right, so I should probably wind up here before I completely lose it, but this production brought me so much pleasure that it’s making me babble. One of the most glorious things about theatre is its ephemeral nature. No matter how well-regarded a show may be, each time it is mounted is a chance to start anew, and each generation brings something different to it. Maybe it will all work, like this Sunday does, or maybe it will stink to high heaven. It doesn’t matter in either case, because someone, somewhere else, will pick it up and try all over again.

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photos by Evan Hanover

Sunday in the Park with George
Kokandy Productions
Chopin Downstairs Studio, 1543 W. Division St. in Chicago
Thurs.–Sat. at 7; Sun. at 5
2 hours and 30 minutes, plus intermission
ends Nov 1, 2026
tickets $55.20 general admission; $65.87 reserved seating; $44.52 students/seniors
for tickets, visit Kokandy Productions

for more shows, visit Theater in Chicago

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