Sunday In The Park With George - Discussion- Page 2

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 10/26/06 at 4:48pm

She is incredibly insecure, though. Its vital to her character. Have you seen a production live before Ciaron?

[jv92]

Posted: 10/26/06 at 5:00pm

I really didn't like it the first time I saw it (on the DVD). I thought it was weird. Then I watched it again and I began to enjoy it, mostly the second act and eventually the first. I've watched it (and have listened to the album) many times now and it's one of my absolute favorites. It takes multiple viewings and listens to like.

[Ciaron McCarthy]

Posted: 10/26/06 at 5:01pm

I saw the OBC and the London Revival. I think all of Sondheims characters are insecure. George is incredibly insecure. That is why it is such a joy to get inside each of their heads.

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 10/26/06 at 5:03pm

Yeah, I was just going to say MB that Dot is totally insecure. She's constantly looking for approval from George or wishing he'd give her some attention. She has a whole song about Louie the Baker and George still doesn't give her the time of day. When she says "I thought you'd want to know I was leaving" and then he does nothing...heartbreaking. While Peters is no weakling, I think Audra's vocals would be too powerful, pure, and perfect for this production. It's like having Sutton Foster in RENT, something in the voice is just too strong.

And I get what you guys are saying about the chromolome (SP?), but I still don't get what the point of it was. Like, if I was in the audience at that musuem when George was showcasing it, I would have been like "um, what?" - Just like that one lady sings in "The State of the Art."

And, "Children and Art" is so beautiful. I was really amazed that Peters could pull it off even though she's suppose to be elderly, it still sounded beautiful.

I also noticed that Sondheim recycled a couple people for Into the Woods (or was this after it?). Did they show up in his other shows as well or is that mere coincedence?

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 10/26/06 at 5:06pm

I thought Jenna Russell was brilliant in London because of her incredible vulnerability and what I would call insecurity. I also don't believe the character of Dot is particularly smart. She knows she is not fully able to grasp Seuret's genius and its part of what makes the character so moving. She desperately wants to understand him.

[Ciaron McCarthy]

Posted: 10/26/06 at 5:06pm

When she says "I thought you'd want to know I was leaving" and then he does nothing...heartbreaking.

She says that because that is what most people would do. it was not unusual for her to say that. She does not understand George. It is another way Lapine and Sondheim seperate him from normal people in order for us to understand what being an artist can be. You can lose that connection to the real world. Which is what wound up happening to George.

[jv92]

Posted: 10/26/06 at 5:06pm

1984 was a banner year for the musical. La Cage, Sunday and The Rink. Three of the greatest scores by the modern masters of the time (Kander and Ebb, Sondheim and Herman, who wasn't in the category for a while.) However, I don't see how Sunday in the Park with George walked away with two Tony Awards. I would have given Sondheim score, Lapine both book and direction and Patinkin actor as well. Of course, George Hearn was magnificent, but I haven't seen or heard a male performance as good as Patinkins in from the 80s. Maybe Raul Julia in Nine. Oh, and Best Musical as well.
Updated On: 10/26/06 at 05:06 PM

[Kitzarina]

Posted: 10/26/06 at 5:07pm

Into the Woods occured after Sunday in the Park With George--Sunday opened on May 4, 1984. Into the Woods opened on November 5, 1987.

[Ciaron McCarthy]

Posted: 10/26/06 at 5:09pm

I thought Jenna Russell was brilliant in London because of her incredible vulnerability and what I would call insecurity. I also don't believe the character of Dot is particularly smart. She knows she is not fully able to grasp Seuret's genius and its part of what makes the character so moving. She desperately wants to understand him.

I didn't get that with Jenna or with Bernadette. They were both normal people caught up in an artists life. That is the whole point of their love story and "We Do Not Belong Together". Dot is not smart...at first. She is unexposed. True knowledge comes from exposure. That is why the subplot of her learning to read is so important. The character in reflection (In act II) is so much smarter and wiser. Especially when she appears for "Move On". "I knew what I had to do". Why do you think she is singing "Move On" with him?

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 10/26/06 at 5:17pm

Well, "not smart" in an artistic sense. She may be unexposed but she will never be an artist and she will never understand that side of George that is an artisic genius. I think that is a big part of the frustration of their relationship. If all their problems could be solved by her learning to read (figuratively, meaning becoming more educated) their relationship wouldn't end as it does. Her learning to read, to me, is more symbolic of becoming aware of the reality of her situation and the reality of the choices she needs to make (i.e. Louis the Baker.)

I always felt that Dot's widsom and serenity at the end of the play was of one who is a spirit reflecting on her life and able to see the greater picture in clarity: I never thought the character, as you see her in Act II is supposed to represent what Dot became once she moved to America and became somewhat educated.

[Ciaron McCarthy]

Posted: 10/26/06 at 5:19pm

I never thought the character, as you see her in Act II is supposed to represent what Dot became once she moved to America and became somewhat educated.

No but the way Marie remembers her is. Dot's learning to read was her being exposed to the world.

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 10/26/06 at 11:31pm

What do you all think of the sets? Especially the parts with the park at the end and during "The State of the Art" with all the fake pictures of George.

Also, I don't get the "Move On" scene. Is Dot refering to George as George from Act 1 and George is refering to Dot as his great grandmother? Cause she says something like "You've taught me a lot of things" and George says, "what did I teach you?" I wasn't sure if he was playing it as he was the old George or the same George that's in the 80s?

[Wild Roses]

Posted: 10/27/06 at 3:55pm

I didn't care for this at all.

Although I am coming at from a feminist and ethnic studies standpoint. So, that does make all the difference in the world as well. (Although it would help, immensely, if those idiots who are hired to write about Sondheim on a cast recording or dvd would keep their gushing to a minimum and not universalize Sondheim's Western white male experience.)

Looking at it from Sondheim's prospective, I think the show is terrific at exploring the lives of artists and the people around them. I also think it has much to say about art, stereotypes about art (many of which, I believe, Sondheim sadly embraced rather than challenged) and how art impacts lives.

From a feminist and ethnic studies perspective, the show had little to say. It seemed to universalize the Western process of making art (I particularly took note of how Sondheim detached Seurat from art history and isolated him). Also, didn't like Sondheim's depiction of women at all in musical. Sondheim is no feminist to be sure, but, damn, he usually makes women seem more rounded and less stereotypical. However, Peters is a goddess and deserved any awards she got for making such her thankless roles in this musical memorable.

Sondheim's other musicals don't offend me (although I find them problematic, I find it more amusing how he tries to universalize his certain perspective) but this one does. Most likely because if Sondheim became a little more acquainted with non-Western perspectives, he would discover that the entire world does not share his views on art as they were presented in SITPWG. (Most non-Western communities and even some in the West contextual their art into spiritual and communal--art isn't just about the intellectual and the individual creating it.)

[maybethistime]

Posted: 10/27/06 at 4:13pm

The score is INCREDIBLE. Tied for my favorite score of all time with "Gypsy," "City of Angels," and LaChiusa's "Wild Party."

The set was also outstanding. So brilliant.

And is was certainly Bernadette's greatest performance to date.

ETA: I can't spell. Updated On: 10/27/06 at 04:13 PM

[moulinrougehk]

Posted: 10/27/06 at 4:36pm

Best of Sondheim! Love Bernadette and Mandy, best performance ever!

[Ourtime992]

Posted: 10/27/06 at 4:44pm

Wild Roses, while I find your thoughts on the subject interesting, it sounds as though you're presenting them in a reflection paper for a women's studies course. Your points are all valid, but I think you're taking Sondheim to task in a way that isn't really necessary here. I don't believe it was ever his intention to portray the entirety of the artistic process as it might possibly apply across all cultures and times. If he had presented George, as you suggest, as an artist interested in the spiritual and communal aspects of artistic creation, he would have erred in just the opposite direction, giving short-shrift to the intellectual and isolating process of creation. Given Sondheim's own career and creative process, which of those options do you think he was more qualified to write about?

>>"From a feminist and ethnic studies perspective, the show had little to say."

Well sure, but whoever said SITPWG was intended to be a work of great feminist importance? Certainly not Sondheim or Lapine. And based on the painting itself, the musical would be stretching pretty far to include characters outside of upper-class, 19th century Paris, which makes the inclusion of other ethnic groups (or even socioeconomic classes, beside the boatman, I suppose) fairly difficult as well.

Which isn't to say that you can't come at the work from a feminist or ethnic studies perspective -- it's just that you aren't likely to discover a myriad of new meanings there. That's the problem I always had with such academic exercises as a Humanities major back in college. I rarely found great insights from reading Beowolf from a Freudian perspective or The Sound and the Fury from a feminist perspective. Yet when I read the books in their own historical context, I found them tremendously compelling. So which is more important, that the books contain some slight meaning for an ideology or paradigm I find important, or that the books say something that the author found important?

I find it absurd to expect any artist or writer or performer to satisfy all the demands that millions of viewers may possibly impose upon his or her work. Allegations that an artist is attempting to "universalize his certain perspectives" are silly -- because that's what all art does: it attempts to take an intensely personal experience and share it with the world in a way that is hopefully comprehensible to others. Whether you find that the work resonates with you or not is one matter -- accusing it of waging ideological war with your values or perspective is quite another.

>>"Looking at it from Sondheim's prospective, I think the show is terific."

So why is it, then, that you find it necessary to impose an academic exercise on a work that you would otherwise find engaging and entertaining? Is it really so much to ask that we as audiences try to come at a work from the perspective the author had in creating it? Wouldn't we be better human beings if we could learn to look at the world through someone else's eyes, rather than forcing their creations to fit through the prism of own expectations?

[Ciaron McCarthy]

Posted: 10/27/06 at 4:44pm

he usually makes women seem more rounded and less stereotypical.

How is she stereotypical? I don't think Dot is anything like the women of that time. She is free spirited and can be tough as nails.

Interesting that you bring up Sondheim basing the show on a Westeners view of art. The score is semi autobiographical. It makes sense that he would write it that way.

What do you even mean by a western process of making art? I lived in Europe for a while and was involved with a great deal of artists. I did not see much difference. Im curious as to what you meant.

[Roninjoey]

Posted: 10/28/06 at 1:26am

I think this is all that need be said in response to WildRoses' dismissal of the show and strange demands of it.

"Stop worrying if your vision is new. Let others make that decision, they usually do."

Your reaction to Sunday in the Park with George is exactly what the show is about. It's a modern day equivalent of Jules. "He's not writing the right kind of show". If you wanted a different musical about something else, write it yourself.

I also picked this out:

"(although I find them problematic, I find it more amusing how he tries to universalize his certain perspective)"

What are you talking about? Growing up listening to Sondheim's music has given me an outlet for things I think and ways I feel (automatically opening his perspective up to perhaps be shared by others in the world) that I don't get much elsewhere. Isn't he celebrated because of his wisdom and ability to delve into OTHER people's perspectives with honesty and courage? It seems to me you're just marginalizing him in a different way because he doesn't address the concerns you have.

I'm not sure what your beef with Sondheim is. He's just an artist commenting on the world as he sees it. You're the one trying to hold him down.

BTW, there are plenty of non-western countries that have similiar artistic traditions (in the sense of self expression) to the Western world. The west didn't exactly invent the idea of expressing yourself. There are also spiritual artistic traditions in the west too. Anyway, theater is the most communal of arts, and Sunday in the Park with George, a theatrical piece, is ultimately about the connection between two people--not to mention family. It is a show about an artist failing the expectations of his community, and the community that fails to understand and accept what he is. And you can't help what you are.

The guy wrote a whole show that uses a foreign theatrical tradition and learned to write non-Western style music. A show that the Japanese respond to, probably better than Western audiences considering it's about their history and culture. In a way it's not even an "American" or a "Western" piece. It's distinctly Japanese, down to the lyrics. There's even a Western parody from a Japanese perspective. How many shows/composers can you say that about?

It sounds to me that you want dishonest art that serves nobody's purpose and has nothing to say TO anybody, just things to say AT everybody.

I'm a pretty passionate fan of Sunday in the Park with George :P

[Wild Roses]

Posted: 10/28/06 at 4:31am

Roinjoey, if you actually read my post carefully, you'll see that I didn't miss Sunday altogether. I said I liked it from Sondheim's perspective, but from a feminist and ethnic studies perspective, I did not. I guess that it too complicated for your mind set to take in.

And, yes, I get Sondheim is writing from a certain perspective but its the idiots like you who try to universalize Sondheim's philosophy that tick me off. Even Sondheim have had the decency to say that his work is written from a white, Western perspective.

Ourtime, thank you for considering my comments. I can take art on its merits, but I am a feminist and I have taken many ethnic studies courses. I don't know why many people think it is so weird that I do like to intellectualize my process of the shows (or books or movies or art) but I do. It doesn't mean I enjoy something any less or am 'dismissing' (to quote the killjoy) an artist, I'm just looking at a show to see how much more revolutionary it could have been. Besides, part of the process of enjoying a show/book/art/etc more for me is breaking it down and looking at from an intellectual perspective (by the way, the feminist in me is screaming hypocrisy at you guys. So it's okay for Sondheim to intellectualize from a certain viewpoint, but it isn't okay for me to intellectualize from my own viewpoint when watching his show? So, basically, the moral is whatever Sondheim writes I should accept unquestionally from his perspective only. Well, thank goddess, Sondheim isn't a novelist. Otherwise, I am sure a whole host of theory perspectives being taught in English 202 would summarally being deleted from the course syllabi because the Sondheimite teaching it wants to teach the Sondheim perspective only.)

Ciaron, to understand why I mean by a non-Western process of making, thinking about, art, reading Paula Gunn Allen's THE SACRED HOOP (anything by Native Americans really), SILENCES by Tillie Olsen, Gloria Anzaldua's THIS BRIDGE CALLED MY BACK. Also, I do get that the show was semi-autobiographical (which makes me laugh, acutally. Sondheim suffers one little failure and his overblown ego leads him to creating a thesis on how artists and art should be thought about? The feminist in me gets no end of amusement out of that.)

Dot is complex, I'll give you that. However, considering that at time the show takes place where it was the age of suffragism in many countries and women fighting for rights on many venues, that fact that he made her so clingy is annoying. I don't feel she ever gets fully redeemed. (Coming back in act 2 to sing a song to support another egotistical male artist seems a slap in face especially. It reinterates the stereotype of the wife supporting the husband even though she is a valid individual in herself. Tillie Olsen wrote splendidly on what I'm trying to articulate in Silences. Not to mention Virginia Woolf in A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN.)

Quite frankly, I don't think Sunday is new in its vision. Maybe on the Broadway stage it was, but many writers with much more sensitivity and more awareness of non-cultural perspectives than Sondheim have managed to articulate better what he was trying to say or not say. (See Virginia Woolf's A ROOM OF ONE OWN.) Of course, Joey will reinterate since I am not a brainwashed 'bot of Sondheim's fandom that my opinions are of no value.

[sweetestsiren]

Posted: 10/28/06 at 11:01am

This is an interesting debate. I would question, though, how Seurat's work and creative processes (what little we know about them) could possibly be viewed from a non-Western perspective. I can understand the issues that you have with the piece in terms of your own values, but given the historical context, I'm not sure that I see what else you were looking for that Sondheim didn't deliver. What's presented in Sunday is one way of looking at art, and I honestly don't think there's anything about it that purports to be totally universal. And it is, for some people, very valid. It doesn't seem fair to criticize the show for what is essentially narrowmindedness because it takes a view (one that is arguably very consistent with the subject matter) over one that you would have preferred seeing represented.

[Ourtime992]

Posted: 10/28/06 at 2:47pm

It is one thing for an academic text or novel to explore multiple cultural perspectives. IT is quite another to expect to same of musical which must be presented in a small fraction of the time one might spend reading.

[Roninjoey]

Posted: 10/28/06 at 4:02pm

Excellent point again, OurTime.

Wildroses, for the record, James Lapine wrote the book of Sunday in the Park with George and probably contributed more of the things that you take issue with more than Sondheim did, who often simply takes what the book writers have written and writes some songs. I read your post clearly and several times. Sondheim has said expressly that the show is not meant to be autobiographical. It's just informed by his own life and viewpoint--like ALL art, western or not. Art must ALWAYS come from inside.

Why does the feminist in you get no end of amusement out of that? Before I say anything more about that I want you to explain that statement. You say you aren't being dismissive and then you say things like that.

How am I a "brainwashed 'bot of Sondheim fandom"? How could I come to be a knowledgeable fan of his by any means but my own? I've spent a lot of time studying his work. I can talk about it at length. I think he's one of the geniuses of our time and therefore worthy of the attention, a conclusion I came to entirely on my own, without even having to take a class on it. Which is true of many of the Sondheim fans I know.

I noticed that you completely ignored the instance I gave you where Sondheim was dealing with issues from a non-white western male perspective. In full. Musically, lyrically, conceptually, Pacific Overtures is a completely Japanese show. As I said, I can't think of many other instances in the cannon where anyone has ever done something like that.

I disagree about Dot, by the way. I think she's an interesting character whose journey is equal to George's and the two can not exist without one another. I don't think that George and Dot's story has much at all to do with 19th century France gender equality issues, actually. Why should it?

What is Sondheim's philosophy? I don't understand. You speak as if he has some sort of agenda he's promoting. I don't universalize Sondheim's agenda/philosophy. He does that for himself. Specificity = universality. Anybody who has ever pursued art will tell you that.

Many of us enjoy intellectualizing, and/or thinking for ourselves. You are not somehow thinking on a higher level because you are writing from a woman's studies/ethnic studies major. We all have different minds, lives, and views that inform how we see things. I think Ourtime992 said it best. It seems like you have nothing to say about the text itself except that it's great, it's just not the sort of thing you go for usually.

I think there's plenty to say about what the text is and does from a feminist/ethnic studies perspective (which you have done and with which I don't necessarily have to agree or to which I might have my own ideas), but I'm not sure of the point in speculating about what it ought to do or could have been had it been geared more towards those perspectives except perhaps as a creative exercise.

I am not accusing you for the process from which you operate. I am criticizing your Stalinesque opinions about art and what it should be.

P.S. I find Virginia Woolf as much as a product of her time, a forward thinker, and person informed by personal vision in her particular field as I do Stephen Sondheim. I imagine she may have appreciated his candor and intelligence.

P.P.S. It makes sense that Paula Gunn Allen, a Native American feminist, would write about feminism and Native Americans. Not stepping too far from world view there, huh.

Updated On: 10/28/06 at 04:02 PM

[Plum]

Posted: 10/28/06 at 10:38pm

Look, my inner angry feminist is as quick to get furious as anyone's, but I never got "clingy" vibes from Dot. She's not as educated as George, and she loves him- maybe in your eyes that passes for weak and anti-feminist. In mine, it's just who she is. She doesn't get his art, but the idea is that no one does- her instincts are good enough, though, to know that he is doing something special. That puts her on a level with Jules.

And when it became clear that George couldn't give her the full attention she wanted, did she cling? Did she try to change him past the point of all hope? Did she slowly die of a mysterious Victorian "turn really pale and fade away" disease? No, she realized that his art would always come first, and she left him, and left the country to make a new start with a man who was at least devoted to her. It takes a hell of a lot of guts to immigrate- even in the age of airplanes. And it takes intelligence and perspective to realize when a relationship's ups aren't worth its downs. Dot has all those qualities, and your cries of "stereotype" simply ring false to me.

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 10/29/06 at 12:01am

Just to add in my two cents, I don't think Dot is being "clingy." I think she can see the genius in George and doesn't want him to waste away. She sees the way other people view him and she feels for him. I think that's why she always says "Hello, George..." to try and get his attention.

I have a question for you guys. Why do you think Dot says his name so much? I just noticed that today. I really like that she does that, but what do you think is the reasong behind it. She always says "Hello George, where did you go, george, I love your eyes, george, etc."

[FoscasBohemianDream]

Posted: 10/29/06 at 12:13am

This might be a very simplistic approach to your question, but to me she constantly repeats his name to call his attention because she feels very much neglected by him.