The new theater season is upon us! So much theater, so little time. I’ve seen 9 plays in the last 9 days! (Already reviewed CHEERS LIVE ON STAGE). Here are two more:
Greg Maraio, Kris Sidberry, Sarah Elizabeth Bedard, Jordan Clark. Photo by Justin Saglio
SIGNIFICANT OTHER–Rush down to SpeakEasy Stage Company and SEE THIS before it goes to BROADWAY. I promise it will be the most fun you will have at the theater right now. It’s the latest from ultra-observant, piercingly funny playwright Joshua Harmon (remember how much you loved his BAD JEWS?). Here he reinvigorates the relationship comedy by cutting to the quick of these characters and situations; it was immediately fresh, funny and fully alive! Four friends–three heterosexual women (Sarah Elizabeth Bedard, Jordan Clark, Kris Sidberry) and one gay man (Greg Maraio) search for mates, and we’re with them every step of the way. One by one we go through the dates, the pre-nuptial festivities, the weddings, the fall out. The pale white set is a beauty, the music dead on (They even make fun of Celine Dion!) and Paul Daigneault’s direction smooth as silk as he navigates every contour of these shifting relationships.
This first rate cast (and you will recognize yourself in at least one of them– I want to be Kathy St. George as that adorable grandmother) is led by Greg Maraio in a breakthrough performance. Here he reveals the full scope of his enormous talent and finds the beating heart of this work: what we are to each other and ourselves, never shying away from the sometimes painful reality of what it takes to be a friend, or find Mr. Right. I was hooked from its opening seconds to its poignant conclusion. At SpeakEasy Stage through October 8!
Adam Chanler-Berat as Georges Seurat. Photo: Paul Marotta.
SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE–This is a stunner of a production of Stephen Sondheim’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical about artistic creation. It’s the 35th season opener by the Huntington Theatre Company, and the beginning of their commitment to mounting all 15 of Sondheim’s musicals for which he wrote both lyrics and music. This is no casual stroll in the park. We’re talking gorgeous sets, costumes, extraordinary stagecraft and visual effects, a mesmerizingly beautiful and organic score, Artistic Director Peter Dubois’s flawless direction, and a nearly perfect cast.
The musical opens on a whited-out stage and an empty canvas framed up against large pale windows. Life enters as Pointillist painter Georges Seurat begins work in 1884 on his painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. He paints in tiny dabs of color which the eye mixes, resulting in hues richer than the physical pigments alone can produce. This is his genius, his way of seeing and working; he is releasing the light on the canvas and producing an image in which the viewer is complicit, in fact, completes the act since it depends on our “seeing.”
Not everyone immediately saw it that way. The technique was revolutionary, and so is Sondheim’s musical. As Seurat paints, the characters on the canvas come to life and their realities within and without the frame are often in conflict. The work requires us to breathe some pretty rarified air as we contemplate the nature of artistic expression, inspiration, commerce, and the inner and outer life of the artist. Sondheim’s score is as melodically layered and lyrically detailed as Seurat’s technique.
The cast with one key exception, is top notch. Jenni Barber is a dream as Seurat’s muse/model/mistress “Dot,” elasticizing Sondheim’s lyrics and music so they swell around her clear and effortless soprano. But Adam Chanler-Berat lacks energy and charisma as Seurat in Act I, seems more alive in Act II and is unaided by a thin, unexpressive tenor throughout. (Can’t get Mandy Patinkin–whom I saw many moons ago in the pre-Broadway workshop production–out of my head or my ears.) It was a pleasure to see local faves Bobbie Steinbach (who has a lovely, touching voice) and the perfect Aimee Doherty who once again bring their gifts to Sondheim on the Huntington stage.
Act II lurches ahead 100 years as Seurat’s great-grandson George searches for funding and inspiration. Forgive me– I find Act II an awkward detour. But it eventually works its way back to the source: that magnificent painting with its characters– their lives held in tension over time, providing inspiration, taking shape, finding balance, order, light, and harmony in that sublime tableau which left me breathless at the culmination of Act I. See SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE at The Huntington Theatre through October 16.
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