Actor/director--
No bashing, but......
1. The Pulitzer Prize for Drama is not respected in theatre circles. Ever since it honored "Harvey" over "The Glass Mengaerie" 60 years ago (and in later years gave "No Award" the year of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" because several jury members considered it to be "filth" and recently made several dubious selections including "Anna in the Tropics" which the the panel of critics awarded based only on reading the play, but then all panned after actually seeing it in production), the award has little meaning. The reputation of "The Pulitzer" has always come from its Journalism Awards -- which are deservedly acclaimed -- NOT from the Drama Prize (and incidentally, you omitted TWO musical recipients -- "Of Thee I Sing" and "Fiorello!").
2. OKLAHOMA is certainly a landmark, but to say "without which, we wouldn't even have musicals" is overstating the case. We had several GREAT, classic, influential musicals before it -- SHOWBOAT, ANYTHING GOES, PAL JOEY, PORGY AND BESS (which Sondheim has called "the only musical that will still be around in 100 years" and considers the greatest ever written). OKLAHOMA wasn't even the first "integrated" musical, but its success elevated the necessity for books and music and lyrics and staging to fit together as one complete, coherent whole. We'd certainly have had musicals -- very good musicals, in fact -- without OKLAHOMA (we'd had hundreds before it), but that it was such a major success changed the standards for the way MOST musicals were written subsequently. It wasn't the first or even best musical, but it may be the most influential.
3. SUNDAY IN THE PARK is FAR from a "documentary-style" musical. It's fiction. In fact, nothing really is known of Georges Seurat's life. We know that he was a 19th century French painter who employed the pointillist style and left behind several impressive paintings that he didn't sell in his lifetime. That's it. We don't know whether he had a mistress or if her name was Dot (for all anyone knows, he could have been gay). We don't know that he had a competitive friend named Jules. We don't know whether he valued art over life itself. We don't know whether he was a loner or that he had an annoying mother. ALL of that is the invention of James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim from their impressions of the painting, their imaginations and the very few, very sketchy biogrphical details that are known of Seurat's life. All of the characters and nearly all of the details in the show were crafted during the creative process in order to come up with a plot for a musical about a visionary painter about whom nothing is known -- all we have is his work to draw on. SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE is anything, but documentary-style. It's pure fiction - but, certainly, brilliant fiction at that.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Updated On: 6/14/05 at 04:11 AM
