Review: Sunday in the Park with George at Art Factory

There’s no doubt about it. Colton Berry, the Art Factory’s founding artistic director, is a great theater talent. His powerful voice screams like a rock star or belts out a Broadway belt, his acting is exceptionally clear and true, he directs with finesse, his set design choices are spot-on, his costumes speak volumes. In a way, he can do it all. So why is he so absent as George Seurat in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1984 masterpiece? A Sunday at the park with George? Where did Berry go?

Sound mixing at Art Factory has always been the bane of their productions. The pre-recorded orchestral music from Music Theatre International is cranked up to a level that borders on static warmth. No singer can match it. Yet Victoria Ritchie, an exceptionally perfumed Dot, George’s muse and lover, easily soars above the over-amplified music. Other members of the cast do so, too: Caryn Fulda as George’s mother in the melancholy “Beautiful,” Jared Dees as rival painter Jules, Luke J. Hamilton as Franz, Luke Yerpestock as the Boatman.

Only Berry is eliminated. Granted, most of the cast doesn’t have a microphone, which is another problem, perhaps caused by financial reasons, but the Art Factory isn’t a big venue, so are microphones necessary anyway? Just turn the volume down so everyone can be heard. We don’t want to miss those patented Sondheim rhymes and sly wordplay. Sondheim’s lyrics are as essential to the story as his glorious music. To miss half of Sondheim is a form of parricide. And the suicide of this musical.

Though lucid and strong during the twisty “Putting It Together” speech, Berry plays Seurat as if he’s literally channeling the criticism he receives from everyone around him, Connect! He’s obsessed with his art and pushes everything else in his life to the background. Nothing is more important to him, not Dot, not his family, not his friends. He’s most alive when he’s painting. That’s where he connects. Berry, who directs himself here, has covered George in a muffled shell. He plays him muted and soft. It’s certainly a valid artistic choice that could work if we could hear him. Now it just seems vague. He’s missed his moment of glory. A Sunday without Georges is greatly diminished.

But Ritchie takes over and dazzles. His Dot is very human and empathetic. At first, she may be an illiterate and cheerful girl, but through her love of Seurat, she eventually sees her own worth. She is the only one who appreciates his art, but she must break away from her apparent indifference to find herself. Her piercing numbers, “We Do Not Belong Together” and “Move On,” are a testament to Ritchie’s power and Broadway know-how in showcasing a song with a complete character. The show’s original Dot, Bernadette Peters, carved this character in stone, but Ritchie is very close to heaven.

What makes this show so wonderful is the way an artist creates, what motivates him, the choices he makes and the ones he abandons. It is one of Sondheim’s most personal works, imbued with a warm nostalgia for regret and the passage of time, filled with melodies and a desire to please that were never his strong points. For years, his critics have dismissed his musicals as cold and insensitive, fragile and mean.

This is partly true, but after the disastrous reception of its predecessor We are rolling happilySondheim changed partners, abandoning veteran director Harold Prince who had guided the early classics (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, A Little Night Music, Follies, Sweeney Todd), and met the young writer/director James Lapine (The March of the Falsettos). The conceptual musical gave way to a more intimate musical book, and the iconoclastic life and career of Georges Seurat, who shook up the Parisian art world with his radical method of painting, was the perfect subject at the right time to revive Sondheim. The musical won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1985.

The actors, though young, do a remarkable job with Sondheim’s meter and delicate verse. When they come together at the Act I finale and sing the moving anthem “Sunday,” his pointillist masterpiece A Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte is revealed in a breathtaking way spectacular turn of eventsThere were gasps from the audience. (There would have been more gasps if the painting had been better lit. It looked washed out and discolored. It should shine like a stained glass window.)

There is an immense power in Sondheim – the mighty force of creation and the terrible toll it can take on the creator and those who must live with him. This is the first reissue of Sunday since the Masquerade Theatre’s remarkable 2011 production. It’s about time. Now, Berry, give us a George to celebrate too.

Sunday in the Park With George runs through July 21 at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 5 p.m. Sundays at Art Factory, 1125 Providence. For more information, call 832-210-5200 or visit artfactoryhouston.com. $30.