Sunday In The Park With George at Studio 54

What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than to see 'Sunday In The Park With George' at Studio 54. This is the same production we saw at the Menier Chocolate Factory a year or so ago with Daniel Evans in the lead as Georges Seurat. We started off with brunch at Pigalle with Dezur and then wandered up to Studio 54 where I was told off for taking a photo of the ceiling.

Studio 54 is much bigger than the Choccy Factory but the production is the same, slightly expanded for the larger stage, with excellent digital graphics and the music is delicious. The story is quite simple, really, the tale of Seurat painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte and some of the characters in the painting, such as Dot, the leading lady in the production who carries Georges' child, Marie, as she emigrates to America. The second act is about Georges' great grandson who is also an artist, stuck in a rut re-creating his masterpiece, who then goes to the Island in Paris and meets the ghost of his great grandmother and regains his creativity. For such a simple tale it's a very emotional piece and people talk of crying buckets throughout the production, which I can understand.

There are two bits that get me. One is when an aged Marie, sitting in a wheelchair, talks to her mother in the painting, all she has left of her mother other than an old grammar book she used to teach herself to read. And Marie dies. What a strange position that must be, where the only image of your mother is in a painting. The second is where great-grandson George talks to the ghost of his great-grandmother when he's at his lowest ebb and she, the muse for Georges Seurat, becomes his muse, inspires him and enthuses him for his art.

As is the tradition at Studio 54, we had to have enormous JD & cokes in the interval (courtesy of Dezur). I like Studio 54 but whenever I go I'm reminded of the disco heyday of the '70s and '80s and all the excess that happened there. I suspect that Georges would have approved.