What Georges did when he was done painting

Sunday in the Park with George

Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by James Lapine
Directed by Alisa Palmer
Starring Steven Sutcliffe and Julie Martell
At the Shaw Festival

Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George , like the pointillistic paintings of its protagonist Georges Seurat, can appear disconnected and fragmented up close. Take a step back, however, and all the dots seem to connect.

Currently on stage in a fine production at the Shaw Festival, the arty 1984 musical - only the sixth to win the Pulitzer prize for drama - follows a mostly fictional Seurat as he works on the creation of his 1886 neo-impressionist masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte .

On any given Sunday, the workaholic Georges (Steven Sutcliffe) can be found on La Grande Jatte making sketches of Parisians on their day off. The figures from his most famous painting come to life in the musical, from the boatman smoking his pipe to the soldiers standing at attention.

The woman in the foreground with the parasol turns out to be Georges's lover, Dot (Julie Martell). But while she may be the most prominent figure in Georges's painting, she is relegated to the background of his actual life.

When Georges reneges once more on a promise to spend time with his real-life girlfriend to stay home and work on the painted version of her, Dot finally dashes, pregnant with their child. "I care for this painting - you will be in this painting," Georges tells her, but Dot wants more than an imitation of love.

Sunday in the Park with George 's second act is not so much a continuation of the first as its complementary colour. We flash-forward 100 years to meet Georges's great-grandson George, also an artist, also played by Sutcliffe. He is unveiling his latest work, a video installation that's less pointillist than pointless. Though it is a success, George is left feeling empty and melancholy. The medium has changed from paint to pixels, but the politics and financing of art are as demoralizing as ever .

In contrast to the last Sondheim musical presented at the Shaw -1973's A Little Night Music -there are very few melodies to hang onto here. The shimmering score is closer to Steve Reich's minimalism than Broadway show tunes. But amid all Sondheim's sober ruminations about art and life, there is some comic relief: for instance, the silly song sung between two dogs about the pleasure of sniffing socks and shoes on a Sunday. ("That's the puddle where the poodle did the piddle," though, is not Sondheim's finest moment in lyricism.)

Director Alisa Palmer's staccato production is, like the show, intelligent but not above a moment or two of jokiness - a stuck-out tongue or a broad poke at ugly Americans. While a few elements of Palmer's staging don't quite work - the bare light bulbs that descend in Putting it Together wobble about distractingly - it does come together bit by bit. Most importantly, she's managed to squeeze a few drops of heart out of this notoriously heady and slightly aloof work.

(Bookwriter James Lapine wanted the dialogue to sound like it had been translated from French - and, well, he succeeded.)

Palmer gets a glowing performance, in particular, from Martell, promoted to the lead after her standout small turn in last summer's A Little Night Music - even if the difficult score occasionally stretches her vocal abilities to the limit.

The silver-voiced Sutcliffe gives an intense portrait of Georges, trying to create the harmony in his art that eludes him in life.

Sutcliffe's singing is sometimes drowned out by the orchestra, however, and his George is less impressive, little more than a privileged moaner. Then again that character, and indeed all of Sondheim's second half, feels only sketched in.

The supporting cast is very well composed: Jay Turvey's wry and rigid Jules, a rival and a mentor to Georges, is a stand-out, while Sharry Flett is particularly touching as Georges's mother, who is going a bit dotty in her old age and frightened by new ways of looking at the world. "Oh how I long for the old view," she says.

The view here, however, is picture-perfect: Judith Bowden's sets and costumes take you through Seurat's painting from black and white drafts to the complete work - the final unveiling is a thrill. Art may not be easy, as Sondheim's lyrics say, but this well-oiled production makes it look like it is.

Sunday in the Park with George continues in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., until Nov. 1.