Monday, June 18, 2012

The Hat, Finished

Just watched the DVD of Sondheim's Sunday In The Park With George. Karen leant it to me to watch in KL, and I happily fulfilled the commission. I've seen the same production some years ago, on television surprisingly, and it was nice to watch it again in my own time as it were.

An odd show. Carrying almost too much emotion (or is it sometimes sentiment?) for its own good. When Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters belt into Moving On you know that somehow this is deeply significant to the writers of the show, but it's very difficult to pin down exactly in what way we are intended to take that significance. A number of worthwhile things are said about art, especially the making of it, in the course of the show, often in peculiarly stabbing moments, but despite the obvious attention to the design as a whole I'm not sure it all coheres.

Mind you, I don't think that matters over much. One just feels like applauding the sheer ambition of the piece. And I'm not talking here about the technicalities of the staging. Rather I'm thinking of the attempt to deal intelligently with themes you don't normally see even glanced at on the Broadway stage.

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