The concert staged reading masters at Musical Theatre Guild put together a stunningly performed and directed Sunday In The Park With George (on a Sunday no less) with just enough production design thrown in that audience members might well have thought they were witnessing a fully-staged production of the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine masterpiece and not a book-in-hand “reading” put together with a mere twenty-five hours of rehearsal.

Inspired by the brief life of French post-Impressionist painter Georges Seurat (1859-1891), Sunday In The Park With George gives us several days in The Life Of A Young Artist as George (Marc Ginsburg) struggles with both the creative process and his conflicted relationship with girlfriend/model Dot (Alyssa M. Simmons), a fictional character wittily named after the dots of color that define his groundbreaking pointillist style of painting.

It soon becomes clear that if Georges Seurat was a genius at making innovative art, his genius came at a price expressed in Dot’s angry, frustrated “Sunday In The Park With George,” George’s painting-obsessed “Color And Light” and “Finishing The Hat,” and the aching heartbreak of the couple’s “We Do Not Belong Together.”

Book writer Lapine introduces us not only to Artist and Model but to the other men and women Seurat immortalized on canvas, fictionalized as snooty art connoisseurs Jules and Yvonne (Brent Schindele and Teri Bibb) and their ill-tempered child Louise (Savannah Fisher), curmudgeonly Old Lady (Eileen Barnett) and her much put upon Nurse (Jennifer Bennett), foul-mouthed Boatman (Todd Gajdusek), quirky German couple France and Frieda (Will Collyer and Wendy Rosoff), good-natured baker Louis (Anthony Gruppuso), opinionated Americans Mr. and Mrs. (Scott Harlan and Bennett), and a pair of comely young lasses both named Celeste (Tal Fox and Ashley Fox Linton) and the handsome Soldiers who make their hearts flutter (Matthew Patrick Davis and Kevin Matsumoto).

And since a single century is not enough for the tale James Lapine and composer-lyricist Sondheim have to tell, the entire cast returns post-intermission for a second act that has Dot’s now 98-year-old daughter Marie (Simmons) offering pearls of wisdom to her confidence-challenged great-grandson George (Ginsburg) as he celebrates the 1984 opening of his art installation “Chromolume #7” attended by glamorous art critic Blair Daniels (Barnett), George’s best bud Dennis (Collyer), brassy composer Naomi Eisen (Bibb), and most significantly the aforementioned Marie, whose short-term memory may be failing but whose remembrances of things past remains crystal clear.

Director Thomas James O’Leary stages all this with a visual flair and precision that belie the “staged reading” label as do A. Jeffrey Schoenberg (and AJS Costume)’s carefully selected period-modern costumes, striking bits of lighting design, and Nicholas Acciani’s artfully animated rear-screen projections.

Central to Lapine and Sondheim’s too rarely revived Broadway gem is a 19th-century painter so obsessed with pursuing his artistic vision in a world that views art as commerce, he finds human connections nearly impossible to establish let alone maintain, a characteristic he shares with his 20th-century great-grandson, both characters brought to charismatic, conflicted, deeply felt, gorgeously sung life by a never-better Ginsburg, capping a series of brilliantly rendered roles from Ragtime’s Tateh to Evita’s Che to Man Of La Mancha’s Cervantes/Quijote before heading off to tour the nation in The Band’s Visit.

Simmons is equally sensational, both as George 1.0’s lover-victim-survivor Dot and as George 2.0’s frail but still gritty grandmother Marie, singing Sondheim with such gorgeous power pipes, they make virtually any Broadway diva’s voice (you name it) sound small by comparison.

Lapine’s book gives each supporting player a chance to strut his or her musical comedy-drama stuff, from Barnett’s wistful Old Lady (and a beautifully duetted “Beautiful” with Ginsburg) to delightful duo Fox and Linton’s feuding pair of very different best friends to the amusingly (mis)matched soldiers brought to life by a loopily loquacious Davis and a drolly “cardboard” Matsumoto.

Schindele and Bibb are  standouts both as snooty art lovers Jules and Yvonne and as their 20th-century counterparts, Rosoff and Collyer are Teutonic treats as Frieda and Franz, and Collyer aces his straight-play scene as modern George’s best bud Dennis.

Gajdusek brings vulgar-tongued, eye-patched Boatman to dynamic life, Bennett doubles terrifically as a hot-to-trot Nurse and as bombastic American Mr.’s (a just-right Harlan) equally loudmouthed wife, Gruppuso does his accustomed fine work as self-effacing baker Louis, and Fischer makes for an amusingly bratty Louise.

Doug Peck scores high marks not just for his musical direction but for his impeccable keyboard work in Sondheim’s piano-heavy score, expertly backed by musicians Chris Ahn, Joel Alpers, Aija Mattson, and Shelly Ren despite occasion sound-design issues.

Leesa Freed is production stage manager and Natalie Aldrich and Stacey Cortez are assistant stage managers. Art Brickman and Freed are production managers. Barnett and Gajdusek are production managers.

If Sunday’s concert staged reading made one thing clear to this reviewer, it’s that regional theaters should resist the urge to program yet another Into The Woods or Sweeney Todd (enough already!) and give Sunday In The Park its fully-staged due.

For now, at least, there was the magnificent Sunday At The Alex With MTG.

Alex Theatre, Glendale.
www.musicaltheatreguild.com

–Steven Stanley
May 5, 2019
Photos: Lewis Wilkenfeld

Tags: Alex Theatre, James Lapine, Los Angeles Theater Review, Musical Theatre Guild, Stephen Sondheim