Stephen Sondheim’s most personal musical, Sunday In The Park With George, finally gets what L.A. Sondheim lovers have long prayed for, a superbly performed, stunningly designed, rarer-than-rare big-stage revival that had its Pasadena Playhouse opening night audience swooning with joy.

Sondheim’s songs and James Lapine’s book focus on a pair of Georges, joined by blood but separated by a century.

The first, French post-Impressionist painter Georges Seurat (1859-1891), finds himself so consumed by his art that little space remains for a lover, or a family member, or a friend.

The second, Seurat’s fictional great-grandson George, has reached a crossroads in his life, wondering whether his devotion to art is worth the personal sacrifices his namesake accepted as part of the bargain.

Together, the two Georges add up to a musical that probably resonated more even deeply with its composer-lyricist than the far more frequently staged Sweeney Todd, Company, or even Into The Woods.

Act One has George I (Graham Phillips) struggling with both the creative process and his conflicted relationship with girlfriend/model Dot (Krystina Alabado), a fictional character wittily named after the dots of color that define his pointillist style of painting.

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.”

Along the way to the breathtakingly beautiful “Sunday” that brings Act One to a close, book writer Lapine introduces us not only to Artist and Model but to the men and women soon to be immortalized on canvas: snooty self-described art connoisseurs Jules and Yvonne (Michael Manuel and dance captain Emily Tyra) and their bratty child Louise (Erica Gonzalez), curmudgeonly Old Lady (Liz Larsen) and her much put upon Nurse (Jeanie Greenberry), churlish Boatman (Brian Calì), quirky German couple Franc and Frieda (Jason Michael Snow and Deborah Lew),

opinionated Americans Mr. and Mrs. (Jimmy Smagula and Alexandra Melrose), a pair of comely young lasses both named Celeste (Juliana Sloan and Jenni Barber), the handsome Soldiers who make their hearts flutter (Trevor James and Armand Akbari), and good-natured baker Louis (Robert Knight).

Act Two, set in 1984, has Dot’s great-grandson George (Phillips again) dealing with his own struggles to find inspiration and create art as his 98-year-old grandmother, Dot’s daughter Marie (Alabado, nearly unrecognizable from Act One), offers Southern-accented pearls of wisdom to her confidence-challenged grandson.

Cast members return in new roles post-intermission to celebrate the 1984 opening of George 2.0’s art installation “Chromolume #7,” chief among them imperious art critic Blair Daniels (Larsen), George’s best bud Dennis (Snow), brassy composer Naomi Eisen (Tyra), and most significantly the aforementioned Marie, whose short-term memory may be failing but whose remembrances of things past remains crystal clear.

Though Sunday In The Park With George first opened on Broadway back in 1984, it wasn’t until 2003 that it finally got its official Los Angeles Premiere (a 99-seat production by West Coast Ensemble) and to my knowledge there’s been only one major L.A. regional revival since then (Reprise’s in 2007), both productions paling by comparison to the one now thrilling audiences at the Pasadena Playhouse, one that reunites the 2017 Broadway revival’s director and designers.

Master scenic designer Beowulf Boritt drapes a proscenium-wide painter’s canvas upstage onto which Tal Yarden’s exquisite animated projections recreate Seurat’s art dot by dot by dot, and Ken Billington’s lustrous, nuanced lighting design brings out the vibrant burnished hues of Clint Ramos’s Act One costumes. (Only the women’s decidedly not 1980s Act Two gowns prove a curious choice.)

Director Sarna Lapine (the lyricist’s niece, in case you were wondering) brings out the absolute best from her entire cast, and in particular from her two sensational leads.

Phillips may not be a household name like director Lapine’s Broadway George (a certain Jake Gyllenhaal in case you were wondering), but he’s got an imdb page a mile long since making his Broadway debut at age 15 as the star of Jason Robert Brown’s 13.

And what a magnificent performance the 29-year-old delivers, one that recalls George originator Mandy Patinkin in the best of ways as Phillips invests the role with passion, power, and pipes that soar in “Finishing The Hat” and Sondheim’s signature “Putting It Together.”

Alabado makes for the most heavenly of Dots, and what a voice the young Broadway vet possesses, the better to break hearts with “Children And Art,” and just wait until leading man and leading lady joins voices in a heart-wrenching “We Do Not Belong Together.”

There’s not a weak link in Sunday’s all-around superb supporting cast (completed by Marc Ginsburg, Savannah L. Jackson, and Brianna Pember), but those with songs of their own (Manuel and Tyra’s caustic “No Life” and Larson’s tear-inducing “Beautiful”) are afforded particular opportunities to shine.

Choreographer Alison Solomon’s musical staging, Danny Erdberg and Ursula Kwong-Brown’s sound design, and Christopher Enlow’s wigs merit kudos of their own.

Last but not least, audiences can rejoice that musical director-conductor Andy Einhorn and his upstage orchestra give audiences a fully-orchestrated Sunday In The Park With George virtually unheard of these days.

Casting is by The Telsey Office, Ryan Bernard Tymensky, CSA, and Rose Bochner, CSA. Allison Belinkoff and Matthew McCoy are swings.

Jenny Slattery is associate producer. Brian Eckert is assistant director. Brad Enlow is technical director and production supervisor. Lisa Ann Chernoff is stage manager and Kaleigh Bernier and Mikayla Bettner are assistant stage managers. Davidson & Choy Publicity are publicists.

Unlike most Angelinos, I’d already been lucky enough to see seven previous productions of Sunday In The Park With George, but all but one of them was either a 99-seater, a staged reading, or a student production.

No wonder then that I have been waiting with bated breath for Pasadena Playhouse’s four-month-long Sondheim Celebration opener since it was first announced last year.

I’m delighted to report that this Sunday In The Park With George hasn’t just matched my great expectations, it has exceeded them … and then some.

Pasadena Playhouse, 39 South El Molino Ave., Pasadena.
www.pasadenaplayhouse.org

–Steven Stanley
February 19, 2023
Photos: Jeff Lorch

Tags: James Lapine, Los Angeles Theater Review, Pasadena Playhouse, Stephen Sondheim