Sunday Times
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Robert Cashill
The show runs largely QuickTime movies, created using Macintosh technology on Mac G5 media servers running Catalyst software.
Audience applause begins at the first Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George before a note is sung. As painter George Seurat wields his brush, deft strokes materialize on the walls of the set — an indication of things to come in a revival that takes a show with one foot planted in the 19
With projections regularly appearing on, Off, and Off Off Broadway, this is clearly the season the form came into its own in New York theatre. Sunday is the fullest expression to date of the craft, as if Sondheim and book writer (and original director) James Lapine somehow divined the use of projection in 1984, when the Pulitzer Prize-winning show opened at the Booth Theatre. Neo-Impressionist painter George Seurat's difficult dot-by-dot construction of his masterwork A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-1886) frames the story. The pointillist preparations, as George observes the mini-dramas of the anonymous Parisian strollers and picnickers immortalized by the 10'-wide canvas, are counterpointed by the collapse of his relationship to his mistress, Dot. Act I ends with the completed work magically unveiled before our eyes, as Dot, pregnant with George's child, departs for America (where the painting is now on permanent display at the Art Institute of Chicago). The second act takes place a century later, as George and Dot's great-grandson, also named George, struggles with his art, a color and light machine called the chromolume, and contemplates his family's legacy amid the complicated modern art world with his grandmother Marie. The show returns to La Grande Jatte, now a corporate park, as a fretful George is consoled and inspired by the painting's characters as he prepares to mount a 100
Sunday has much to say about life, love, and art, and Sondheim's songs, including “Finishing the Hat,” “Beautiful,” “Move On,” and the standards “Children and Art” and “Putting it Together,” crystallize its themes. In the dual roles of the two Georges, and Dot and Marie, Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters were Tony Award nominees that season. The original production is available on DVD, where it is easy to appreciate how much of the show's appeal rests with its realization, a series of delightful pointillist cut-outs by scenic designer Tony Straiges judiciously lit by Richard Nelson. Both won Tonys for their work.
The revival Sunday, a Roundabout Theatre Company production at Studio 54, hails from London and arrives with its Olivier Award winners intact — best actor (Daniel Evans), actress (Jenna Russell), and director (Sam Buntrock) among them. The Olivier-winning combo of video designer Timothy Bird and set and costume designer David Farley have also crossed the pond, along with sound designer Sebastian Frost. New to the team is New York's own Ken Billington, lighting designer. The revival started modestly, at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2005. A tumultuous response there moved it to the Wyndhams Theatre on the West End the following year. The designers are pleased to have had two years to fine-tune it for its trip back home to Broadway.
The idea to outfit Sunday with projections came from Buntrock, himself an animator and filmmaker, who is all of 32 years old and began work on the show in 2004. The book and lyrics lend themselves to their use, and the show embraces the concept. The culmination of the painting, with its moving figures snapping into place alongside the actors, is but one highlight, as is its final fadeout to a blank canvas. In “Putting it Together,” the conflicted George interacts with his multiple divided selves in the second act art gallery set, a dazzling tour-de-force for Evans reminiscent of Bob Hoskins interacting with Looney Tunes in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Three hours of projections, which unspool and overlap in tandem with the action of the two-hour and 40-minute show, were created, ranging from the showstoppers (like the spectacle of the chromolume, which fills Studio 54 with colored dots) to the matte painting of the Grande Jatte in its 20th century incarnation, and fetching details, like the tail wagging of the frisky animated dog that finds a home in the painting. [Shaun Freeman, a lead animator on the Oscar-winning Happy Feet, created the dog remotely from Australia.]
Buntrock and Bird are old school chums who intersected once more when the director liked his ghostly projections for a production of A Christmas Carol. “We both saw the show as an appropriate arena for this technique,” Bird says. “Our content is painterly and illustrative, which supports the notion of an artist creating a work. The libretto was our starting point. From there, David and I developed a notion that would hold the piece together, that the first act would always be in George Seurat's studio — allowing the audience to be transported into the park from there — and the second, the 20th century gallery. That helped us pull off a seamless design whole.”
Bird is the creative director of UK-based Knifedge Creative Network, and a 12-person team there was responsible for the show. A key player was production projection engineer and media programmer Sam Hopkins, “who took this new technology and got us to do what we wanted,” Bird says. XL Video UK was another valued team member. “They've been extremely supportive; indeed, when we started, we were short on money, and there was a degree of working for the love of the project, without which this might not have happened. The show runs largely QuickTime movies, created using Macintosh technology. All of it fits on Macintosh G5 media servers, running Catalyst software that allows us to treat the content.”
A Wholehog 3 console from High End Systems guides the projections. An ETC Obsession II triggers the Wholehog 3 and the PRG Virtuosos used for the lighting, via MIDI. The cues are called by the stage manager or triggered by timecode or a footswitch under the conductor's piano via the sound console. The projectors include six Barco CLM R10+units, upgraded from London's package of Sanyo XP56s.
“We totally reprogrammed from scratch, and our librarian, Ciara Fanning, kept track of all the content,” Hopkins says. “The Barcos provide brighter output for the larger room and can compete with the larger lighting rig. We had ESP Vision make us up correct projector fixtures and lenses for pre-visualization; they also implemented aspect ratio as a feature for us so that we could correctly pre-author the content. In New York, we authored content to wrap around the scenic elements, particularly the downstage wall returns, allowing us to get a better horizon line; team leader Nina Wilson and I spent hours getting this sorted in Vision. At Studio 54, we mounted the projectors on the FOH truss instead of the balcony rail. This gave us a much higher angle, meaning we wiped out on the actors less. It also meant it was much harder to get at them, hence the very useful Barco network control where I could adjust the projectors from my laptop wirelessly from the house.”
