‘SUNDAY IN THE PARK’ IS A NOTE-PERFECT PRODUCTION
It’s a rare occasion when theatergoers have the opportunity to see a production of the musical masterpiece “Sunday in the Park with George.”
So I wasn’t surprised to see a full house Saturday night at CCAE Theatricals’ opening night for the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido. But I didn’t expect nearly a quarter of the audience to stay behind after the cast’s bows to hear music director Elan McMahan lead the lush orchestra through to the final note of the exit music. It was that beautiful.
Over the past year, fledgling CCAE Theatricals has emerged as San Diego County’s most promising new producer of musical theater. Run by artistic director Jordan Beck and managing producer J. Scott Lapp, the company stages top-notch productions of new, ambitious and lesstraveled musicals featuring creative artists from around the country, as well as a live orchestra.
The dual role of George in “Sunday” is on most singing actors’ wish lists, but it’s difficult to sing with its sometimes jagged, tempo-hopping songs.
Fortunately, CCAE landed Broadway veteran Will Blum for the role, who not only has a lovely and flexible singing voice but he’s an excellent and sensitive actor who must take his characters through a range of emotions, from joy to grief to anger to rapturous wonder. And playing the dual roles of George’s long-suffering muse and model, Dot, and her granddaughter, Maria, is the versatile Emily Lopez, who has a rich voice and endearing stage personality.
Director T.J. Dawson has designed a detailed production that moves with the same grace as the music, and he draws out excellent and multilayered performances from his actors.
“Sunday” is inspired by the 19th-century French artist Georges Seurat, who created the painting style
known as pointillism, where a series of multicolored dots, rather than brushstrokes, come together to form a picture. In the first act, we meet the obsessive and insufferable 1880s-era George. And in the second we meet his great-grandson, George, a burnt-out American artist in search of inspiration.
Not every note of “Sunday” is easy-listening. Sondheim re-creates Seurat’s rapid dot-dot-dot painting style in staccato, fastchanging notes that, at times, long for a melody. But then there are long stretches of gorgeous music and clever lyrics that only Sondheim could create.
Seurat would sketch visitors at an island park in Paris on Sunday afternoons, and then assemble bits and pieces of his drawings into a full-scale painted tableau.
It’s breathtaking to watch Blum orchestrate Seurat’s famous and history-making “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.”
“Sunday” features a cast of 18 actors and an all-local design team and 13-piece, harp-enhanced orchestra. It’s a big show, which is a luxury in these post-pandemic days.
The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1985, “Sunday” is about the process of creating art and the sacrifices required of the artist and everyone around them. So, seeing this rare work of art re-created so well here in San Diego is a gift to theater-lovers.