En Petit Comité

Sunday in the park with George

I thought Stephen Sondheim was dead.
I mean, you talk to me about the guy who wrote the lyrics of West Side Story, and I assume that he was in his fifties when he did it, and so that now he is long gone.
Well, no, Sondheim is not dead! That is quite a good news really.
One of his musicals has actually just opened at the Wyndham's theatre in central London, after being revived last year at the Chocolate Menier Factory: Sunday in the park with George.
It tells the story of French pointillist painter George Seurat, and the creation of his painting Un dimanche apres midi sur l'ile de la Grande Jatte.
The new production is very inventive, with a big white room and a projection of the painting without its characters working as the background, as George is painting his lover Dot ("dont move your lips!"), or his mother, or random people.
The music is, I guess, pure Sondheim, though I have no idea what it means.
All I know is that the first act went like that, the second even faster, that the tunes (and there were many!) were well carried by the cast, that I laughed a lot and I suddenly had a rush of "frisson" (as we say in french) at the end, as the whole cast sung "on an ordinary sundaaaaay"...
If any of you come to London this summer, let me know, I would quite enjoy to see it again with you.