Another Chromolume, George?

When Sunday in the Park with George was first seen by audiences at Playwrights Horizons in 1983, they only saw the first act; in fact, the second act would not be completed until days before the official opening on Broadway the following year. One of the challenges faced by Sondheim and Lapine was finding a way to continue the story of the artist and the painting that more or less ended in act one. So the team decided to set act two a century in the future, and make George’s great-grandson an experimental artist. Young George’s claim to fame, the Chromolume, presented a significant puzzle for the team. In Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created 'Sunday in the Park with George', Lapine quotes Sondheim as saying, “If George’s piece of art is not inventive and impressive, then our contemporary George is no good.” 

The team hired visual artist Bran Ferren to create the Chromolume: a tree-shaped (or perhaps mushroom cloud-shaped) sculpture that served as both a projection surface and a structure from which lasers could shoot out at the audience. In Lapine’s book, Feren claims the Chromolume sequence was “the first use of projection mapping ever, and it was done before video projection was possible. We actually ended up writing computer programs to geometrically warp the images on film and project them onto the sphere atop the structure.” Scenic designer Tony Straiges incorporated the device into his design, and the miniature Chromolume he created for his set design model was donated to the Library for the Performing Arts in 2018. 

The Chromolume created a challenge for later productions. Like George Seurat’s paintings, it should make experimental use of color and light. The second act is textually set in 1984, and probably needs to be so if young George’s grandmother can have memories of Dot. The Chromolume, then, must seem impressive to audiences, but also seem like it is at least reasonably possible using 1984 technology. Lasers, expensive ones, are likely part of the work, since, in "Putting It Together", George reminds himself of the price of this equipment every time he “starts to get defensive.” 

The 2008 Broadway revival used video projections (created by Timothy Bird and the Knifedge Creative Group)  throughout both acts of the musical, but slightly reduced their complexity for the Chromolume demonstration. In the 2017 Broadway revival, Beowulf Boritt designed a sinusoidal arrangement of colored lights which he described as a “kinetic light sculpture” suspended above the orchestra section, and which was robotically raised and lowered during the showcase. Video of both productions are accessible in the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive and photographs of the 2008 production are preserved in the Joan Marcus collection.

In March of 2024, the Axelrod Performing Arts Center in Deal Park, New Jersey, presented an innovative new staging that featured ballet dancers. In the first act, the dancers represent the thoughts in George’s head (often the dabs of color he applies to the canvas). In the second act, they spend most of the early scenes dressed in black, frozen in a tightly grouped gathering at center stage as a work of performance art resembling a statue. Color and light are not present and there is, as Jules says in the first act, “No Life.” George’s Chromolume (designed by Paul Miller) is a lighting effect in which beams of colored lights rake the audience in alternating patterns. As impressive as it might be, the color and life of the first act has been reduced to robotics and electricity. 

At the beginning (and end) of the musical, George (both of them) state that a blank page or canvas presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Each new production of a much loved and much-revived musical like Sunday in the Park with George may not present an entirely blank page, but the gaps in the text provide an opportunity for a director to innovate within constraints. The Axelrod production offers a vision that is new, and is, in fact, full of life.