Through the Years with Bernadette Peters

Sunday in the Park with George (1984)

"Connect, George, Connect," says George, the great grandson of impressionist master George Seurat, who is in the midst of a spiritual crisis in the second act of "Sunday in the Park with George," Sondheim's first collaboration with writer/director James Lapine, which arrived on Broadway in 1984. Who did connect with palpable chemistry were Mandy Patinkin and Peters, each masterfully playing two different characters from two different centuries in this visionary musical. I was fortunate enough to watch it develop over its gestation period during its previews. Early on, the walk-outs were frequent, but this unusual show steadily found its groove and audience, in part to the extraordinary recreation of Seurat's masterpiece, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte," that ends its first act. But as the show headed towards opening, it became apparent to Sondheim and Lapine that the second act wasn't gelling. It was Sondheim to the rescue. Just days before the critics came, two new songs were added – "Children and Art" for Peters, who played George's 98-year-old grandmother; and "Lesson #8" for Patinkin. Suddenly the show's emotional arc fell beautifully into place. With "Children and Art," Marie's soliloquy, Sondheim brilliantly condensed the show's complex themes into a simple lullaby that was performed by Peters in a frail whisper. Earlier in the first act, she played Seurat's mistress Dot, corseted and complaining in the show's tongue-twisting title number; coquettish when dressing in "Color and Light;" ruefully comic in "Everybody Loves Louis;" and simply heartbreaking in "We Do Not Belong Together." But nothing tops the final duet with Patinkin, the anthemic "Move On" that leads into the final tableaux of the painting. They were magical, and in "Sunday," Peters was a great singing actress in a great singing role.