Back to Sunday In The Park With George
1
Synopis(From OBC booklet)
Act 1When the lights come on, we see George, and artist, dark-bearded and intense, seated downstage at an easel with a large drawing pad and a box of chalk. As he speaks, the backdrop of white portraits rises, a white ground cloth rolls off, and the set is transformed into the park on the ile de la Grande Jatte, just outside of Paris.
George goes off and returns with Dot, his mistress and model, who wears a traditional 19th-century outfit, heavy and with a large bustle. Having positioned her so that he can see her profile, George sits down at his easel and begins to draw. Muttering about a tree, he erases feverishly--and one of the trees flies up out of sight. Throughout the play the landscape changes in this magical fashion.
An Old Lady and her Nurse enter the park, the Old Lady complains that "our" tree is missing. Dot, standing in the sun, also complains--but to herself (Sunday In The Park With George).
A wagon bearing a kind of tableau vivant of Seurat's first major painting, "Bathing at Asnieres," rolls into view, three of the figures portrayed by actors. They hurl a couple of insults and a Bronx cheer at George. He gestures: all freeze, and for a moment the scene becomes an art gallery. Jules, another artist, and his wife, Yvonne, stroll in, look at the "painting" and lament that it has (No Life). The sky and trees return -- we are in the park again.
George closes his pad and gathers up his things. Dot is annoyed at being left. "We'll go to the follies tonight," he promises her as she leaves. He walks over to the Old Lady and Nurse, hoping to sketch them. The Old Lady rebuffs him, saying, " Some other day monsieur" "It's George, Mother" replies the artist. She tries to quiet him, as if their relationship were a secret.
The scene shifts to the painter's studio. He is working behind a large canvas. In front sits Dot at a vanity powdering her face, calling to mind Suerat's later work, "Young Woman Powdering Herself." George applies tiny specks of paint to the face of the woman in the foreground of his canvas in the same rhythm that Dot powders (Color and Light).
It's another Sunday afternoon on La Grande Jatte. George is sketching a Boatman. A cutout of the Boatman's black dog, Spot, stands nearby. The Nurse and the Old lady are by "their" tree, while two young girls, both named Celeste, sit chatting (Gossip). Dot enters arm and arm with her new man, Louis a baker. While he offers pastries to friends, Dot works at a grammar book that is helping her learn to read and write. Jules and Yvonnes's young daughter, Louise, dashes mischievously about among the people. George goes over to Dot: "Lesson number eight?" "Yes," she replies, "Pronouns. My writing is improving. I even keep notes on the book." As she asks about his painting, Louis bounds in with a pastry tin. George excuses himself and quickly walks away; Dot and Louis go off.
The artist concentrates on sketching the dog. Before long he has assumed the guise of Spot, imagining his life with the Boatman on a garbage scow, much like the boats we can see in the river, and his yearning for the grass on a Sunday, (The Day Off). George then takes on the voice of Fifi, a pug dog cutout, and the song becomes a duet between the two dogs. The Nurse clucks at the ducks, the artist makes a quick sketch. More people come into the park, among the Franz and Freida, who are Jules and Yvonne's servants, and two Soldiers, one of whom is a cutout figure. The girls finally get the attention of the Soldiers. As George sketches each of these characters, they sing. All become part of "The Day Off." Mr. and Mrs., two gauche American tourists enter, eating pastries ravenously and looking about them disdainfully. George leaves when he sees Dot returning. Looking after him, she extols the virtues of the Baker (Everybody Loves Louis).
At the end of the day George is alone in the park. He sits down near Fifi and leafs back through his sketches, using key words and phrases to recall the people he has drawn. Remembering Dot, he expresses regret at her departure...but art is his life (Finishing The Hat).
People return. Dot and George face each other, and a crowd gathers. Suddenly Dot turns her bustle around, creating a pregnant stance. There is a gasp from the onlookers, and the scene ends.
George is in the studio, working. Dot enters and tells him that she and Louis will be going to America after her baby is born. She pleads with George for a sign that he cares for her. He says he cannot be what she wants, that he needed her but she left. She replies that he is complete, all alone, but she is not, she has to move on (We Do Not Belong Together.)
Another Sunday on La Grande Jatte. George sits drawing the Old Lady, who now seems loving and dreamlike in her attitude toward him. She urges him to capture all that is (Beautiful) in the changing world before it disappears.
People begin to fill the park, among then those we have seen George sketch. Dot carrying her baby girl, who she had named Marie after a character in her grammar book, goes over to where the painter sits. He does not look up from his pad. "Can you not even look up to see your own child?" she asks. "She is not my child. Louis is her father." Says George. "Louis in not her father," replies Dot. "Louis is her father now, " says George as he continues to draw. Dot walks away, but George calls to her across the park to sat "I am sorry."
All of the characters begin to congregate in the park, and squabbles and arguments break out, erupting into one big fight, which George observes. There is an aprpeggiated chord, and, as George looks at them, everyone stops. When he calls for "order," design," tension," and "balance," the people take positions throughout the park. Music begins, and the group starts a peaceful promenade as George moves about rearranging tress, cutouts and figures. Finally he steps back and freezes everyone into their final poses in the painting. His picture is complete. He has created his 'harmony" (Sunday).
Act II
When the curtain rises we see again the final tableau of the first act. The harmoniously achieved serenity is at an end, however and we hear, separately and together, the complaints of the people in the painting (It's Hot Up Here). The spell is broken, the figures depart, the landscape disappears.
And it is 1984. We are in the auditorium of the museum where "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" is on exhibition. a young man named George brings on stage his 98-year old, wheelchair bound grandmother, Marie, the daughter of Dot and the painter. A control console and a large white machine with a sphere on top are rolled on.
The contemporary George is an inventor-scuplter,and the machine--seventh in a series of "Chromolunes"-- is his latest creation, commissioned by the museum to commemorate Suerat's famous painting. He also has been asked to present a short lecture on the life and works of Suerat, and for this he has brought Marie along. They begin, accompanied by music, film projections and light emissions from the machine. Music and lights intensify, creating a pointilistic look and sound(Chromolume #7). A malfunction of the machine stops the performance. While the problem is being dealt with, the museum director, Bob Greenberg, tells the audience the museum has sold air rights to allow condominiums to be built above it and they are open for inspection. The lecture-demonstration resumes, concluding spectacularly with images from Seurat's paintings flashing on the sphere and laser beams bursting through the audience.
A cocktail reception is in progress at the gallery where "La Grande Jatte" is displayed. Among those present are Bob Greenberg : Harriet Pauling, a wealthy patron, and her friend Billy Webster, Charles Redmond, a visiting curator, Alex and Betty, who are artists, and Naomi Eissen, who has composed the music for the Chrommolune presentation. The septet comments on "the state of the art." Their message is that what is important is what's new. "Art isn't easy,'" says Billy to Harriet. How you get there matters more than the art itself. It is a world full of cliche's and generalizations, pettiness and promotion of self.
George and his ex-wife Elaine, enter with Marie. He readies himself for the work ahead: making the right connections. As he works the crowd. George makes moves around the room raising cutouts of himself to which people subsequently direct their conversation (Putting It Together). This turns out to be much more like making a deal than painting a picture. "Link by link..." George continues his depressing soliloquy. He raises yet another cutout and puts a drink in it's hand--drink is the link to patronage. Cocktail conversation leads to commissions and exhibitions. Hype is vital to the artist trying to make connections. But, George rationalizes, it is all necessary; throughout history every artist has needed patronage and display.
George's doubt's about the value of this are heightened when art citric, Blair Daniels tells him that he is repeating himself. Sensing that she might be right, he becomes more worried, even agitated, running around, trying to keep the cutouts from collapsing, trying to keep his connections intact.
People drift off into another room for dinner. Alone in front of the painting, Marie looks up at the figure of her mother and recalls her words (Children And Art). She tries to connect her grandson emotionally to the painting, telling him he would have liked her mother and she would have liked him.
The final scene takes place on the island of Grande Jatte. Marie has died. George is there, having been invited by the French government to give a presentation of the Chrommolune. The place is barely recognizable as the park Seurat painted a century ago. Most of the trees have been replaced by high-rise buildings. George has with him the grammar book Marie claimed her mother had given her, although he has never quite believed that Marie's mother was the woman in the painting. He leafs through the book, reading various pages (Lesson # 8). He looks around, realizing that he would like to see the people from the painting to believe the family legend.
In the midst of his reverie, Dot appears. She sees her red book and thinks that he is " her" George. She asks him if he is working on something new, 'No." he replies. "I've nothing to say." Grateful for what she has learned from the painter, Dot tries to give something back, to help him open his heart (Move On).
George asks Dot about some words in the book. "They are your words, George" she says. "The words you uttered so often when you worked." He reads them slowly--and brings to life again the people out strolling on Sunday. The landscape becomes the park of the painting. When he cannot read one of the words, Dot reads it for him--"harmony."-- The company, reassembled now begins to sing (Sunday) . Dot takes George by the arm, and they join the promenade.
But the picture is not completed. The strollers exit, Dot the last to go. George steps from the park and opens the book again "White. A blank page or canvas. His favorite. So many possibilities..."He looks up and sees a bare canvas, the image of Dot disappears slowly behind it.
