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TIP OF THE WEEK
Sunday in the Park with George

Nina Metz

As I kid I used to sit about two inches away from the TV, fascinated by the fact that the picture on the screen was actually a combination of thousands of tiny colored circles. This bizarre fixation seemed less so a few years later when I first laid eyes on Georges Seurat's enormous nineteenth-century pointillist painting, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte." It's a work of art that is seductive in charm, deceptively simple in complexity, and the same can be said for the 1984 Steven Sondheim/James Lapine musical, "Sunday in the Park with George." Act I follows Seurat and his lover, Dot, as he creates the painting, dabbing on dots of color that are "not mixed on the palette—mixed by the eye." Act II takes place 100 years later, when Seurat' s great- grandson, a hip installation artist, tries to find some balance between art and commerce. In some respects the production by Pegasus Players excels, thanks to the set design by Jack Magaw and the precise direction by Gareth Hendee. Though a bit young for the role, Joel Sutliffe does justice to his George, biting into Sondheim's crisp lyrics and dissonant, elliptical melodies. As Dot, Sara C. Walsh is less appealing, and never quite masters the phrasing needed for Sondheim's tongue twisters.

"Sunday in the Park with George" runs through June 30 at O'Rourke Center for the Performing Arts at Truman College, 1145 West Wilson, (773)878-9761.

(2002-05-30)

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