Your Chicago Guide’s tickets for two to the press viewing of Sunday in the Park with George courtesy of Kokandy Productions.
Kokandy Productions once again celebrates the great Stephen Sondheim with a revival of his stunning masterpiece Sunday in the Park with George, playing through November 1, 2026 in the intimate Chopin Downstairs Studio. Around here we think that Sondheim is always a good idea. And this particular musical painting is one of our favorites. Run, don’t walk, and spend some time inside the mind of the brilliant Georges Seurat, as his paints his masterpiece, and one of Chicago’s most cherished possessions, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Who hasn’t admired this piece at the Art Institute? It takes one’s breath away.
Sunday in the Park with George merges past and present into beautiful, poignant truths about life, love and the creation of art. One of the most acclaimed musicals of modern time, this moving study of the enigmatic painter, Georges Seurat, won a Pulitzer Prize and was nominated for ten Tony Awards, including Best Musical.
“Sunday in the Park with George was one of the first shows I pitched to direct when interviewing to join the company back in 2018,” says Producing Artistic Director Derek Van Barham. “It’s almost a decade later and we’re finally visiting this astonishing masterpiece. It feels like the right time. The show offers us a chance to reflect on what we’ve been creating and to look forward at what we still hope to achieve – both as a company and as individual artists. Sunday reminds us not to linger too much on the future or the past, but to focus on the present moment, to connect with each other in real space and time. What a gift that will be. What a gift it is to be together in a room, taking in a piece of art, having communal and singular experiences at the same time.”
As we have come to expect from Kokandy Productions, the vocal action is breathtaking, the accompaniment is live, and the acting stellar. The audience get swept up in the inflamed yet brilliant mind of Seurat, who creates a whole new method of painting using dots of different colors. Seurat mixed no pigments, used no black, and forced the viewer’s eyes to translate his color pallette instead of his brush. Is the hat violet or created by thousands of blue and red dots, intricately placed? As all genius, Seurat was a little bit mad, and we watch that mental illness on stage, in all its heartbreaking glory.
The Seurat paintings take their turns in the spotlight, culminating in a live picture of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. We see the painting itself as a backdrop, we see its characters come alive and sing. We see the artist’s work, unrecognized in his lifetime, valued and explained after his death. All of it is pure magic, and as is usually for Kokandy, the audience is in the center of it all.
Four stars from the Chicago Tribune? -deserved indeed. Go spend some time in the park with George. You will come away richer in spirit for sure.
Kokandy Productions Sunday in the Park with George is now playing at the Chopin Downstairs Theatre, 1543 West Division Street, in Chicago. Tickets sold here or by visiting the box office.