Previews are a set of public performances of a theatrical presentation that precede its official opening. The purpose of previews is to allow the director and crew to identify problems and opportunities for improvement that weren't found during rehearsals and to make adjustments before critics are invited to attend.
- Wikipedia
Good luck to Mr. Jake Gyllenhaal, whose musical Sunday in the Park With George by Stephen Sondheim will begin previews this evening, February 11, 2017 at the Hudson Theater, located at 139-41 West 44th Street on Broadway. On Wednesday the 8th, Jake and his co-star Annaleigh Ashford cut the opening ribbon for the historic 1903 playhouse which was refurnished and is being used for its intended purpose for the first time since 1968. What an honor!
The musical was inspired by a painting called "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat, dated 1884.
No wonder the posters for this musical are so beautiful! And knowing this now, I had to wonder what would the ever enlightening art analyst Sister Wendy think about this painting and, lo and behold! If you know nothing at all about art, Sister Wendy can take you on the most wonderful of journeys and make you feel like you can go to an art museum and not feel so lost anymore.
From Sister Wendy's "American Masterpieces":
"Seurat's Grande Jatte is one of those rare works of art that stand alone; its transcendence is instinctively recognized by everyone. What makes this transcendence so mysterious is that the theme of the work is not some profound emotion or momentous event, but the most banal of workaday scenes: Parisians enjoying an afternoon in a local park. Yet we never seem to fathom its elusive power. Stranger still, when he painted it, Seurat was a mere 25 (with only seven more years to live), a young man with a scientific theory to prove; this is hardly the recipe for success. His theory was optical: the conviction that painting in dots, known as pointillism or divisionism, would produce a brighter color than painting in strokes.
"Seurat spent two years painting this picture, concentrating painstakingly on the landscape of the park before focusing on the people; always their shapes, never their personalities. Individuals did not interest him, only their formal elegance. There is no untidiness in Seurat; all is beautifully balanced. The park was quite a noisy place: a man blows his bugle, children run around, there are dogs. Yet the impression we receive is of silence, of control, of nothing disordered. I think it is this that makes La Grande Jatte so moving to us who live in such a disordered world: Seurat's control. There is an intellectual clarity here that sets him free to paint this small park with an astonishing poetry. Even if the people in the park are pairs or groups, they still seem alone in their concision of form - alone but not lonely. No figure encroaches on another's space: all coexist in peace.
"This is a world both real and unreal - a sacred world. We are often harried by life's pressures and its speed, and many of us think at times: Stop the world, I want to get off! In this painting, Seurat has "stopped the world," and it reveals itself as beautiful, sunlit, and silent - it is Seurat's world, from which we would never want to get off."
Sister Wendy on A Sunday on the Island of Grand Jatte
No wonder the song "Sunday" is so beautifully and tranquilly inspired.
So good luck to Jake and all of the best wishes for success in this limited run. Knock 'em out of their socks, buddy.
pic sources: nytimes, theartinstituteofchicago, ihj
our playlist: Brown Eyed Girl - Everclear
The Rain, The Park, and Other Things - The Cowsills
MacArthur Park - Donna Summer
