Over the last century only nine musicals have managed to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, arguably America’s highest prize for anything on stage. One of those was Stephen Sondheim’s 1984 musical, Sunday in the Park with George, which is widely considered to be one of the smartest musicals ever written, drawing inspiration from Georges Seraut’s painting ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte’. The first act imagines Seraut’s process of creating the painting and digs deep into all his artistic crises. The second act leaps forward a century and we see yet another artist struggling to make their work.
Melbourne’s Watch This theatre company has actually made Sondheim’s work their bread and butter, and have presented acclaimed productions of Assassins, Pacific Overtures, Company, Merrily We Roll Along and A Little Night Music. To tackle Sunday in the Park with George, they’ve enlisted director Dean Drieberg (who is co-directing with their artistic director Sonya Suares) and Nick Simpson-Deeks as George, Vidya Makan as his muse Dot, and Jackie Rees as George’s mother.