Sunday in the Park With George – Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford

Picture: Danny Kaan

Sunday in the Park With George continues at the Mill Studio, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford until 23 September 2023.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Stephen Sondheim’s 1983 musical Sunday in the Park With George, the second of his collaborations with bookwriter James Lapine that led ultimately to the more successful Into the Woods, is inspired by the French pointillist Georges Seurat and his best-known work, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Act I presents Seurat’s weekend activities painting his muse Dot in the Parisian outdoors in the 1880s, the second jumping forward a century in time to modern-day America to witness their descendants (played by the same actors, as George and Marie) at an art museum exhibition.

This ten-day run at Yvonne Arnaud Theatre’s Mill Studio may be the first Sondheim musical by production company Quick Fantastic, but its artistic director and founder, Alex Parker, is by no means a stranger to the composer-lyricist’s output. Sunday in the Park With George is Parker’s sixth Sondheim show produced in Guildford since 2010, as well as marking a welcome return to the venue where it all began, with A Little Night Music (from which Quick Fantastic takes its name) back in 2010.

Owing to the stark differences between the musical’s two halves, it is Laura Sillett as Dot who stands out in Act I, not least for effortlessly navigating Sondheim’s wordy lyrics in the title song, as well as for a playfully risqué performance in ‘Color and Light’. Conversely, Act II affords Alastair Brookshaw the well-deserved opportunity to come into his own as George (the fictitious great-grandson of the painter he played in the previous act), unequivocally taking centre stage after a long wait.

Given the nature of the show and the small venue, the performance space seems sparse on some occasions and busy on others, but rarely do the characters in the background conflict with the main action, partly owing to director Charlotte Conquest’s effective staging of the tableaux that are a hallmark of Sunday in the Park With George.

There are too many admirable contributions from the production’s supporting cast to cite them all individually, but I would draw particular attention to the double acts of Lee Thomas and Clare Salter as Jules and Yvonne, and Charlotte Fleming and Lucy Appleton as the two Celestes; Michael Stafford Wells’ suitably gruff Boatman; and Jaymes Sygrove as the Soldier, who acts well alongside the cardboard cutout traditionally deployed to represent his military partner. I would have liked to have seen Clara Conquest’s up-and-coming talent showcased a little more, since her role as Louise seems to require her to do little other than scream and run away.

Perhaps given the change of focus in Act II, as well as its shorter length (there are only five new songs, fewer than half that of the previous act), I felt less of a connection to the secondary characters once the show advanced to the 1980s, set in this production in the Art Institute of Chicago, where Seurat’s originating painting is now held. Many of the actors are almost unrecognisable from Act I since they expertly embody completely different characters, and are now wearing modern 1980s dress and in many cases also wigs (designed by Samuel James Wigs).

The technical team excel in this production, particularly in bringing to the stage the modern-day George’s ‘Chromolume #7’ art installation. The band, presenting a charming orchestration by Michael Starobin for piano, violin, cello and harp under Parker’s musical direction, draw out well Sondheim’s endeavours to reflect Seurat’s trademark use of colour separation and pointillism through the use of melodic fragments and recurring staccato motifs.

The cosy space offered by the Mill Studio means that the evening warms up in all senses, given the current unseasonably hot temperatures (which lends the Act II opener an added irony), but it really is the ideal venue for this production. Conquest as director takes full advantage of the intimate setting to stage a delightful show that gives the same care and attention to every minute theatrical gesture as Seurat did to the many distinct brushstrokes that make up his famous painting.

Christopher Wiley