Review: Sunday in the Park with George

Sunday in the Park With George
Watch This
10 August 2019
Whitehourse Centre
to 10 August 2019
Geelong: 15–17 August
gpac.org.au
Melbourne: 21–24 August
mtc.com.au

Nick Simpson-Deeks, Vidya Makin. "Sunday in the Psrk with George".. Photo by Jodi Hutchinson

"White. A blank page or canvas."

The cliche of an artist opening a work of art by contemplating a space of nothing should feel as condescending as it is – but it doesn't. Bloody Sondheim; even his most indulgent work feels real.

Sunday in the Park with George is Stephen Sondheim's 1985 personal plea for theatre-goers to understand the process and importance of art. It's the sixth show Melbourne-based independent Sondheim-only company Watch This have brought us and one that looks at the work with their own perspective.

The original production starred Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, with the book by James Lapine. It won Tonys and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and is especially well known because it was filmed and released on home video (it's easy to find in YouTube; it's awesome). It was the show that Sondheim was never going to make because he declared he was quitting theatre following the heartbreak-cum-disaster of his Merrily We Roll Along, which closed after 16 Broadway performances in 1981. (If you haven't seen the documentary Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, it's on Netflix; it's also awesome.)

Sunday is an imagination of artist George Seurat in the two years he was painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884) in Paris, and his great grandchild George's reimagining of the work 100 years later with the super-cool computerised art of the 1980s.

It's a work that can feel difficult to sink into. In act one, the stories and characters have limited connections; there are discussions about pointillism, colour and art theory; and the protagonist is difficult to like as he connects more with a dog in the park than with his mother or his pregnant lover and model, Dot.

But even the best-worst name pun ever – his painting is a series of dots – is overcome as the act ends with an ensemble number that's as affecting as anything Sondheim has written. It brings all the disparate elements together musically and dramatically with a demonstration of "order, design, tension, composition, balance, light and harmony" that can't explain why it pokes emotions that you may not have known were there.

With a orchestra of four – four! –, Ned Wright-Smith's musical direction and Dominic Woodhead's orchestration focus on the transcending dissonance to harmony and supporting the singers to find the emotion inherent in every note.

Watch This don't have the resources to create the sort of design that productions of Sunday are known for, but Sarah Tulloch's design (with Rob Sowinski's lighting) looks at sections of the painting as it develops and has lots of fun with the 1980's version. And Rhiannon Irving's costumes let the characters feel like they really did come off the painting as the fabric is also coloured with dots.

Directors Dean Drieberg and Sonya Suares ensure that character leads everything on the stage and that the performers let the characters feel personal. This production isn't a deconstruction of a man able to spend his days making art that he thinks will change the world. It's not about the finished piece. It's about what he leaves out of the canvas (score/book/review), what he changes, and what he distorts to fit his idea of perfection.

Representation is far more than being peeved because your image is out of proportion.

The gaze of an artist rarely reflects reality.

As George's model, Dot is as much inspiration to him as she is irrelevant. He might love her but is far more passionate about her standing still or letting him finish that darn hat. Vidya Makan shows how easy it was for George to choose her, but she is confident enough to know that she can't get lost in her love for George. She doesn't resort to spite and knows that she's making the best choices for her, even if they hurt.

However, a production of this musical rests with George and George, who are played by the same person. The Georges aren't easy men to like unless you love them. Nick Simpson-Deeks's George is personal. He holds George 1's emotions so close that George barely knows they are there and George 2 is tightly wound and determined but open to being so much more. As he holds back the emotions, his performance shines as he lets the music and song show everything that George 1 would never say and what George 2 learns to express.

We sing what we can't say; that's how great musicals work. When George and Dot sing, we see who they really are; we see the flecks of light and dark. And parasols.

Watch This don't make us stand in the middle of the gallery and look at the work of a "genuis". This Sunday in the Park with George moves us to the corners and behind the crowds where the view isn't as clear and perfect. It's a production for us and for now.

They open tonight in Geelong and this weekend might be your only chance to see it because their Melbourne season is all but sold out because Sondheim fans know not to miss it.

What Melbourne Loved in 2018, part 4

It's more trickle than flood this year. Here's the form; tell us about those theatre and art moments in 2018 that made you happy.

Today, we keep celebrating independent makers and companies, and celebrate all those challenges to boring assumptions made about art, makers and audiences.

Sonya Suares
Artistic Director, Watch This

Sonya Suares in Contest. 
(I was a GS in my primary school church team; I wasn't good.)

Favourite moments in 2018
Both of mine were sitting in the Beckett Theatre this year: tears running down my face as Dalara Williams performed the inciting monologue in Blackie Blackie Brown and nearly wetting myself moments later, just as I did during Michelle Lee’s Going Down.

If I am permitted a moment that is not simply as an disinterested audient, then I must say truthfully watching Nadine Garner nail "Send in the Clowns" at every performance of A Little Night Music during the run was one of the highlights of my year. I mean, Every. Single. Time.

Looking forward to in 2019
I'm looking forward to sending everyone I know to the return season Blackie Blackie Brown and, because I'm a big boffin/child-of-the-90s, to seeing Shakespeare in Love. Or you know, being in it if Simon Phillips decides to give me a spin!

And personally, I'm looking forward to performing Fleur Kilpatrick's Max Afford award-winning play Whale with a group of incredible womens. It's gonna be a ripper.

SM: Sonya is the driving force behind Watch This. Putting on musicals is expensive and difficult. Putting on Sondheim musicals multiplies the difficulty considerably. Watch This do it, anyway.  Without Watch This, we would see far less Sondheim in Melbourne. Without them we wouldn't see some some of out best performers in Sondheim musicals. If I had a magic funding wand, Watch This would get the money they need to become an ongoing professional company. As for my favourite moment with Sonya this year, it's her moving and powerful performance in Contest by Emilie Collyer.

Vidya Makan & Nick Simpson-Deeks in next year's Watch This show.
Co-directed by Sonya with Dean Drieberg.
Sondheim fans don’t need a title.

Mama Alto
Jazz singer, cabaret artiste and gender transcendent diva

Mama Also. Photo by Alexis Desaulniers-Lea

Favourite moments in 2018
Mojo Juju's "Native Tongue". One of the most important new Australian works right now and, I suspect, for many years to come. Revelatory, extraordinary, damning, tender, groundbreaking, truth telling and part of a highly necessary reckoning of the national identity.

Honourable mentions. Willow Sizer's theatrical cabaret Death of a Demi Diva was a revelation. She gave a tour-de-force performance that set the hairs on the back of my neck on edge. Paul Capsis as Quentin Crisp in Resident Alien (return season). Magnificent, eccentric, and in many ways so close to home for all of our inner anxieties, foibles and paranoias.

Honourable mentions for things I saw interstate (naughty, I know). The View Upstairs (Hayes Theatre, Sydney) and An Evening with Constantina Bush (Spirit Festival, Adelaide).

Looking forward to in 2019
I'm eagerly keeping my eye on new works and projects from leading thinkers, powerful performers and those who speak back to imbalance. Anything and everything from Candy Bowers, Jean Tong, and Yana Alana. Midsumma 2019's theatre, cabaret and burlesque offerings look extraordinary. And, as always, I anticipate with relish the as yet unannounced surprises that will pop up underground in salons, dens, cabarets and dives across Melbourne. What delights await us at Hares & Hyenas, The Butterfly Club, The Melba Spiegeltent, and where else?

SM: Every moment with Mama Also is the best. She's exquisite. I think my favourite moment was sending interstate friends along to a show she was performing at. When they got back, all they could do was tell about this amazing performer called Mama Alto.

Booking my ticket for The Seventh Annual Mama Alto Holiday Special now. Join us.

Chris Wenn
Noise maker and overthinker

Chris Wenn. Photo by Ezekiel Rodofili

Favourite moments in 2018
There's no single moment that excited me quite as much as the feeling that we've reached a tipping point of invention and fertility within the independent sector . There was such an incredible amount and range of work presented by independent artists and companies in 2019. There was tremendous work to see from new, emerging,and established creators, and from sectors of our community that have gone unrecognised for too long. In the world outside of the major performing arts companies, we have had to build a level of resilience and self-sufficiency that can stand against the inconstancy of grant schemes. The Brandis 'reforms' and Fifield 'restoration' have only proved that we are, and always will be, a target for cuts and culture war. I am immensely proud of the way our community supports each other: through fundraising, crowdfunding, donations of time and material and effort, and a myriad other ways. Can't stop, won't stop.

Looking forward to in 2019
I'm looking forward to more work! More work by and for children and young people, more work by and for Indigenous people, more work by and for queer and non-binary people, more work by and for migrants and non-English speaking audiences. I want to see more work that challenges conventions and assumptions and what it means to make and witness art. I want to see work that reflects the strength and diversity of this global city, that engages audiences in new ways, that deploys technology and creativity in new spaces and old.

SM: Sound designers are such an important part of a design team and we don't talk about them any where near enough. Next year, I will listen to shows more. Chris was part of an amazing design team for Colder at Red Stitch. I mentioned the stage and the lighting designer and not Chris – but as I think back on the show, I can still hear it.

Review: A Little Night Music

A Little Night Music
Watch This
1 March 2018
The National Thearte
to 3 March
watchthis.net.au

A Little Night Music. Nadine Garner & JOhn O'May. Photo by Jodi Hutchison

Independent company Watch This are working their way though all the Sondheim musicals for us and if they could get some more financial support – musicals are expensive to put on – they'd be able to do them all and start again. We're not going stop wanting to see Sondheim shows. The only thing holding this company back is resources.

A Little Night Music had a very short run in Geelong and the so-gorgeous 1920s National Theatre in St Kilda, and finishes this weekend with a sold-out run at the Whitehouse Centre in Nunawading. How exciting to see shows moving out of the inner-city circle of theatres and reaching new audiences.

Nadine Garner's role defining performance as Desiree – "Send in the Clowns" – is unforgettable. She captures being middle aged and beginning to fade into invisibility, but still feeling 20 and searching for a slither hope in the jaded outlook she's developed to cope. Combined with exceptional musical direction and vocals, it's a production that should be welcomed back, after some time and development

Inspired by an Ingmar Bergman film, A Little Night Music opened on Broadway in 1973 and won Tonys. Set in Sweden in a summer where the sun doesn't set and offer the relief and darkness of night, it's about the frustration and infuriation of love, sex and relationships – "love's disgusting, love's insane".

If you've seen, or are planning to see, the utterly exquisite National Theatre production of Follies, that still has some screenings at the Nova, Sondheim wrote A Little Night Music after Follies. Both have incredible roles for women, especially older women, and relationships – sexual, romantic and familial –  that are so complex that multiple viewings only reveal more complexity.

Music director Daniele Buatti creates a strong layered sound from the orchestra of five (despite having a problematic sound mix in the National) and lets individual voices shine and bring their own twist and sound to the music. How good would it be if they had the resources to record?

But there's a gap between the music and the direction and characters. The direction moves people around the large stage more than letting the relationships between characters control the action. While each performer brings originality and understanding, especially in the songs, the characters, and the world they are in, aren't consistent. The relationship space between them isn't filled with subtext and all the contradictory feelings that they don't tell each other; it's confusing to desperately want to shag someone you hate, or maybe love, or should never even think about.

And this is where support and money is so needed. There's too much amazing work in this production to focus on the elements that distract because they were limited.

The design suffered from feeling a bit too "community theatre" – and could have been more neutral than Spotlight bargain – but this show needs time in the rehearsal room to develop consistency and the tension that lets the audience get drawn into the world and question if what they see is what's actually going in.

Review: Merrily We Roll Along

Merrily We Roll Along
Watch This
30 June 2017
The Lawler, Southbank Theatre
to 15 July
watchthis.net.au

Nelson Gardner, Nicole Melloy & Lyall Brooks. Merrily We Roll Along. Photo by Jodie Hutchinson

My review is on The Music.

Review: Assasins

Assassins
Watch This
13 April 2013
fortyfivedownstairs
to 21 April
fortyfivedownstairs.com

Sondheim fans don't need anyone to convince them to see a production of Assasins, and they are selling out fortyfivedownstairs every night to see new a company, Watch This, take aim and fire.

Assassins was first produced Off-Broadway in 1990 and at London's Donmar Warhouse in 1992, the MTC showed it to Melbourne in 1995 and the Broadway revival was set to open in 2001, but was postponed in the light of the September 11 attacks and the nature of its material. It's a show about people who assassinated or tried to assassinate US presidents.

With a book by Tony Award nominee John Weidman, it's a bitter and darkly funny look at American culture and how the American dream can go so wrong that some need to blame and punish. By presenting characters before the moment that assassination/attempt marked them as insane and unAmerican, it presents people who are not asking for sympathy or even empathy, but are simply seen as more than just the act of violence they are remembered for.

Watch This is Sonya Suares's (who was General Manager of Red Stitch) new company and this debut has assured that Melbourne's music thearte lovers are already looking forward to their next production.

With a rehearsal time that was counted in days, not weeks, their Assasins is assured and complex and deserving of its full houses. While there's an inconsistency among performances and voices, this doesn't take away from the production and leaves us imagining how amazing they will be with the support and funding to rehearse for a reasonable amount of time.

Musically, well it's Saint Stephen Sondheim so it captures the inner turmoil and emotions of its characters in ways that are felt more than heard, then hangs in your head until you buy the CD, know the work backwards and find yourself singing it at inappropriate moments. The small orchestra can't grasp the intricacies of his composition, but again all this does is wish them the support to have a bigger orchestra.

Without a central character, it's a story that takes some work to engage with because each scene is about someone new, but there's a balladeer who connects them all and reminds us how history's truth is easily distorted and a small ensemble of everyday people to reflect on the events. This production suffers slightly in its focus on the individual tales and hasn't dug that little bit deeper to find the connections that make it one story that's about us as much as the people who chose to pick up a gun. Then towards the end "Something just broke" beautifully brings the stories into our lives and hearts as it forces us to remember hearing about an event when something in us just broke.

It also doesn't seem certain about it's opinion about guns. Most people on the stage have a gun that they play with and shoot, and too often their guns are clearly light props. I'd love to see the menace turned up and to have the guns treated as if they were real – heavy, dirty beasts that can kick back and burn their holder. I wanted to feel more unsettled when the guns are pointed at the audience.

Sondheim fans, don't wait to get a ticket for Assasins because there might not be many left. It's not a perfect production, but it captures the mood and power of the work, asks questions that resonate, introduces some terrific new talent (and reminds us why we love some of the old) and as this is Watch This's first show, I'll be first in line for their next one.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.