‘Sunday In The Park With George’ Cast Visits Art Institute To Celebrate Seurat And Sondheim

DOWNTOWN — Any Chicago theater company producing the seminal Stephen Sondheim musical “Sunday in the Park with George” has one amazing ace up its sleeve: the privilege of easy access to the show’s inspiration. 

“A Sunday on La Grande Jatte,” the legendary work by 19th-century French painter Georges Seurat, was acquired a century ago by the Art Institute and, over the decades, became one of its main attractions. The team at Kokandy Productions, which recently opened its own revival of “Sunday” at the Chopin Theatre in Wicker Park, took full advantage of their proximity.

Earlier this summer, Derek Van Barham, the company’s producing artistic director, spent an afternoon at the museum, listening to a cast recording while pondering the painting. “I just sat on a bench for probably three hours and went through the whole show, scene by scene,” he told Block Club. “I would pause when I’d get to the end of a song and catch up with myself. I basically did the staging for the entire show right there in the gallery, sitting with the painting.”

He’s not the only one. Other members of Kokandy’s artistic team and the entire 14-person cast, sooner or later, made a pilgrimage to the Art Institute’s gallery 240, where the painting dominates the room. Some had only seen it recently, specifically because they were preparing to audition for this production or because they had just been cast. 

Others had a longer history with Seurat’s giant masterpiece, which is more than six feet tall and more than 10 feet wide.

“I remember seeing it as a child, and it looked so big,” said Lauren Miller, who plays Seurat’s mother.

“I got introduced to Sondheim through this musical,” said actor Missy Wise Vanderzee. A friend introduced her to the 1984 original cast recording, which featured Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters. Patinkin played Seurat; Peters played his fictional lover, cheekily named Dot. 

“I fell in love with the score, and it’s what actually made me move to Chicago,” said Vanderzee, who’s now playing Dot. “I came to see the painting and then fell in love with the city.”

Actor Z Moore had a different take. Hailing from Arizona, they only recently saw the painting for the first time.

“When I came into the gallery, I thought, ‘I don’t know why everybody’s so interested in this painting. What’s going on?’ It had this sense of mystery,” Moore said. 

Although today it’s Seurat’s world-renowned magnum opus, “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” was not initially beloved. Inspired by new research in color theory, Seurat had developed a technique called Pointillism, painting tiny dabs of color on his canvases in a mosaic-like fashion and relying on the viewer’s eye to mix the colors when a work was viewed from a distance. He deployed this painstaking technique with “La Grande Jatte,” working on it from 1884-86, but when first unveiled in Paris, it was met with disdain. 

In an interesting artistic parallel, Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park with George” — a brainy musical grappling with the price of living as an artist — has followed a similar trajectory. Although it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (a rare feat for a musical), it received mixed reviews and only won two Tony Awards in design categories. The original Broadway run closed at a loss, but its reputation has grown in the decades since.

Meanwhile, the painting has become iconic, appearing throughout pop culture. The famous image has appeared in “The Simpsons” and, one century after the painting’s debut, in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” That movie, in particular, introduced Seurat to members of a new generation — including Van Barham. 

“Like many people from a small town, my dream scenario of Chicago was formed by John Hughes in the ’80s, with Ferris Bueller playing hooky, spending the entire day wandering the city,” he said. “The visit to the Art Institute, specifically the sequence with Seurat’s painting, was ingrained in my mind. So when I first was taking trips to Chicago in college, it was like, ‘We’re going to the Art Institute to check that off the list!’ ”

Many individual theater artists or duos have made a pilgrimage to the museum — including visits in the early 1980s by Sondheim and his collaborator, James Lapine, who wrote the book to the musical. (Most recently, “Wicked” castmates Jonathan Bailey and Ariana Grande paid a visit in advance of what was supposed to be their London production of the show, scheduled for 2027; Grande has since left the production.) 

But it’s very rare for an entire cast to visit together. According to an Art Institute spokesperson, museum staff can only remember one other instance when the full cast visited en masse: in September 2012, when Chicago Shakespeare Theater actors performed a number from the show. 

Last month, Kokandy became the second group to visit together, when the entire cast gathered together for a photograph. It was another special moment in a big year for the company, which will briefly have three shows running concurrently, including a spirited production of the musical “Hair” at the Chopin, which closes Sept. 13, and a revival of last year’s hit, “Jekyll and Hyde,” which begins performances Tuesday at the Broadway Playhouse At Water Tower Place.  

“The painting really does inform the music,” said music director Nick Sula, who was also present at the Art Institute for the group outing. He had previously come on his own to study it, in preparation for rehearsals.

Sondheim’s score, full of staccato notes and dissonant chords, reflects Seurat’s technique. Standing in front of “La Grande Jatte,” Sula elaborated: “You hear the dots, you hear the clusters of chaos coming into order, you hear all the contrast you can see here. Absolutely it was an inspiration to see it, helping to find more and more within the painting to bring out in our music.”

“Sunday in the Park with George” runs at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division St., through Nov. 1. Tickets and more information here. “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” is on permanent display at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave. Tickets and more information here. 

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