“Sunday in the Park with George”– Big Noise Theatre Company – 5/9/09

Confound it. What’s a critic to do? I’ve been thinking about this since I saw the show a week ago and there’s no way out of it. I find myself in the position of having to give a good review to a show I don’t like. Not a good review – a rave review.

Critical complaints customarily settle upon injustices perpetrated upon a brilliant play by a clueless theatre group. This is a case of a magnificent, transcendent production of an indifferent work. It’s like using your best china and finest chef to prepare a twinkie – if you want to go to all that effort and expense for a twinkie, great – but it had better be the best chef and the goddamnedest china in town or it’s still just a twinkie. Big Noise’s production transcends twinkie.

Sunday in the Park with George by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine is playing through tomorrow at Big Noise Theatre Company in Des Plaines. It concerns the painting of “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” by Georges Seurat in 1884. Synopsis here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_in_the_Park_with_George.

Despite its innovation, Sunday in the Park with George is an overwrought soap opera about a Disconnected, Tortured Artist and the Woman Who Loves Him. Intricate, pointilized music about the artistic process alternates with passionate, sweeping arias about how tough it is to be an artist and have to deal with people, dagnab it. And the more passionate the music became, the less I cared about the people singing it. “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” is a magnificent work. You look at the dots and marvel what effort and ingenuity it must have taken. But you don’t want to spend the afternoon hearing about it. It’s not interesting. “But,” you say, “Sunday in the Park with George won the Pulitzer Prize!” So did Seascape, Edward Albee’s piece of shit about talking lizards. Sometimes you get a consolation Pulitzer for crap when you deserved it for an earlier work.

But the production. Oh my God. Get out there tonight or tomorrow and see this show. The backgrounds and settings are computer animated. Techwise, this is one of the greatest productions you will ever see anywhere, amateur or professional. Seurat’s painting comes to life on the stage and in it, seasons change. Boats pass. The friggin’ daylight changes with the time of day. There are not many people in local theatre about whom I will use the term “genius”. Rick Frendt, the director and computer animator, is a fucking genius. If you despair about what is possible in community theatre, this production won’t just cheer you up, it will leave you enraptured.

The music is gorgeous and beautifully rendered by Musical Director Ryan Brewster’s ensemble. Jonathon Lynch’s choral work is strong and breathtaking. The singers are rarely overpowered by the musicians because, for once, the singers are stronger.

Scott Sumerak is brilliant as Georges and George. His fine acting and stellar singing go a long way toward making the characters nearly likable. Correction – I don’t think the characters are meant to be sympathetic. We can empathize with them, but we certainly don’t sympathize. I don’t, anyway. So Sumerak really is on the mark, with no quibbles.

Jeny Wasilewski (Dot and Marie) is luminous. A perfect match for Sumerak, she lights up the stage whenever she is on it. My surprise is that I liked her even better as Marie than I did as Dot.

The rest of the cast works as a powerful ensemble. Mark Anderson, Sarah Jane Blevins, Emilie Frake, Ron Goldstein, David Laub, Julia Macholl, Steve Malone, Ashley Stricker, Ann Stuart, Mia Vaananen, Mike Weaver and David Whitlock each seem capable of carrying a show on their own, which is exactly the way a good ensemble should work. They work as a well-oiled machine, which in the case of this script is particularly important.

At the climaxes of both acts, I had tears in my eyes. Let me repeat that because it doesn’t happen often: the sheer stagecraft of Big Noise’s efforts was work of a transcendent theatricality that put tears in my eyes – twice – for a show I don’t like.

Normally, with a very difficult show, the script and score will overpower the theatre company. In this case, the theatre company very handily whips an intricate but “eh” show into shape and triumphs. Taking a servicable piece of work and turning it into a piece of essential viewing is something Big Noise can be very proud of. And if, unlike me, you're very fond of Sunday in the Park with George, this is your dream production. Repeat: essential viewing. See it quick.

Information here: http://www.bignoise.org