All News about this upcoming show will be kept here...
*Tickets are on sale now for this. It starts 13th May and runs through untill September. It is showing at the Wyndhams theatre located in Leicester square*
23/03/06
West End-Bound Cast Records Longer, Fuller CD of Sondheim's Sunday
It’s approaching lunchtime on a cold Tuesday in early March, and record producer Tommy Krasker is asking for something that was important to the painter Georges Seurat, as well: order. "Everybody bear with me, please," says Krasker, talking from the control area of Recording Room 1 at Angel Studios in Islington, north London. "I need quiet, and I need to get through this." It’s the second in a marathon two-day effort to record what will be the first recording of Sunday In the Park With George since the original Broadway cast album of the Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical over two decades ago.
The reason: the transfer to the West End in May of the recent Menier Chocolate Factory revival of the show, starring Daniel Evans as Seurat. In advance of its re-opening May 23 at Wyndham’s for an initial ten-week run that could extend until September, director Sam Buntrock’s production is being preserved on what should be a longer, fuller Sunday– 87 minutes across two discs, or so hopes its American record producer Krasker, co-founder of the New York-based label PS Classics. (A single CD runs 79-1/2 minutes tops, says Krasker.)
Bottles of water abound, reflecting the need to keep lubricated voices that will be performing the show live that same evening; the first three sessions took place the previous day, Monday, when Sunday does not perform. But although time is tight, Krasker, marking his debut UK project, says the conditions in London are brilliant, as the British like to say, compared to New York. Whereas union regulations back home stipulate a week’s salary for each performer for every day spent in the studio, British Equity requires that you are paid solely for the hours you work. "Ironically, this feels like a luxury to have 15 hours of recording," Krasker tells me during the lunch break. "And I’ve never gone in and tried to record 87 minutes of music, so I knew I needed the extra time." The only comparable experience, he says, was producing the live cast recording of Dreamgirls in concert: 150 minutes in total.
On the other hand, Krasker’s Broadway ventures inevitably allow for the composer to be present–Maury Yeston, with whom PS Classics collaborated on its first cast album courtesy the recent Antonio Banderas revival of Nine, or Sondheim, with whom Krasker has recorded numerous shows (Saturday Night, The Frogs, and Pacific Overtures, as well as Broadway’s current Sweeney Todd for Nonesuch) prior to this go-round of Sunday. But because we’re in Britain and Sondheim is not, Krasker has to be the composer-lyricist’s eyes and ears, and bookwriter Lapine’s, too. During "Lesson # 8," one performer is urged to tone down his Southern accent–"interesting" doesn’t have to sound quite so much like "inneresting." Conversely, cast member Gay Soper, playing Seurat’s mother, laughs, having adopted the wrong accent while recording some dialogue that follows the song, "Beautiful." "`I worry about you, George,’" says Soper, bringing herself up short. "Oh, I went into American: wrong language."
Absolutely right have been the talent and skill brought to the task, especially since Krasker’s experience with the company prior to getting in the studio had been conducted primarily by e-mail. "This was a good one; everybody was happy," says Krasker, sending the ensemble off with a smile so he can spend the rest of the day focusing on his two leads, Evans and Jenna Russell, who plays Dot. "These people were lovely to work with; there was no tension. There are certainly some producers who like it when everybody’s a little bit tense, a little bit on edge; they feel that tension creates good performances. I actually find people are going to give you better performances when they’re comfortable."
Though Krasker clearly rules the session, the production’s director, Buntrock, is very much in evidence. "I asked Sam to be involved because I didn’t have Steve here," says Krasker, "so Sam was very useful to me–but we also hit it off very fast." The quietly spoken Buntrock cites moments where he can help, for instance when it comes to a song like "Color and Light." In the number, he says, Seurat and Dot "don’t actually speak to each other until a minute before the end: It’s a five-minute number where they’re both overlapping speaking to themselves, so that moment when they communicate to each other has to be made more apparent in the voice." Krasker, for his part, praises Buntrock’s talent for "finding a directorial way of accomplishing musical ends. These are amazing actors, so you can give them acting beats as opposed to saying, 'I don’t think you should belt that as loud.’"
One crucial task for Buntrock has been guiding Russell’s Dot into a role the performer has not yet played on stage. Having only finished her Olivier-nominated run as Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls 48 hours before the recording, musical veteran Russell is the lone new recruit to the production; she replaces Anna Jane Casey, who drew raves for her portrayal but decided against the transfer. "Jenna has run at it like you wouldn’t believe," says her admiring director. "I’ve rehearsed her into the show for the recording but there are things we haven’t rehearsed that we will go back and look at" in the spring when rehearsals for the actual transfer take place. "It’s an odd process," says Buntrock of the demands made by this disc: "We’ve aimed specifically at the recording first as its own thing and getting that down. This is only the show’s second-ever recording, but you have to forget that when you’re in the room. If that were in your mind, you’d be paralyzed by the idea that this thing is going to be around for years–and the production won’t."
In fact, Russell did get to deliver the show’s opening number in costume several days earlier, as part of a marketing launch for the £400,000 West End transfer that was held on the Chocolate Factory’s notably wide stage. (For the transfer to Wyndham’s, the physical production will lose in width what it gains in depth.) Russell addresses the challenge while munching on chips, seated besides Evans toward the end of lunch. "My fear was that coming to this new, I’d be making
 Musical director Caroline Humphris works with the Sunday stars |
For Evans, Sunday marks the Welshman’s second-ever cast recording following the National Theatre revival of Candide, in which he co-starred with Simon Russell Beale–"I was so green then that I can’t listen to it anymore, although I’m told it’s a great recording." With Seurat, he says, the task is one of "capturing the essence of the production," minus visuals that those hearing the disc obviously won’t have. "You have to reach a middle ground where something can be endlessly re-listenable-to; excuse my grammar. You’re after something that can afford more than one listening," says Evans. The performer leads a project costimg one-third less, in Krasker's estimation, than the same recording might cost in the US.
The lunch hour is over, and Krasker sweeps through to gather up his stars: "I’m taking you back to your room"–a booth to the side of the main space where the pair will lay down first the show’s title song and then Dot’s emotional second-act anthem, "Move On." Watching intently from the back of the control room is Menier co-artistic director David Babani, who was a Bristol University contemporary of his director, Buntrock. (While at Bristol, Babani and Buntrock worked on a tiny fringe production of Assassins at the New End Theatre, in Hampstead, which first brought them to Sondheim’s attention, and that of the critics.) It’s in Babani’s interests to see that his cast deliver up the show on disc while maintaining vocal standards for a live production that continues for one final week. "They all knew this was coming, so they’ve been bracing themselves. We’re keeping things firmly crossed it doesn’t affect the show."
On the other side of the glass partition, Russell is lending a growly wit to the title song, her clenched-mouth fury at the aesthetic demands of her beloved Seurat echoing the show’s creator, Bernadette Peters, without ever imitating her. It’s the first time, apparently, Russell has heard the band, and both her timing and pitch are spot on. As she performs it, the number that gives the show its name is clever but never cute, drolly funny where necessary but dead-serious in helping define the complex central relationship that drives this show.
"Well, that was pretty damn good for a first take," says Krasker, as Russell finally releases the song’s long-held final note. And he’s right. It was.
11/03/06
Great news!! Jenna has been in recording studios this week recording some songs from 'Sunday in the park with george' these, along with other songs from the show will be released on a CD later this year!
According to Playbill.com: "What they're putting together is expected to be the most complete recording yet of the 1984 score of the Pulitzer Prize winning musical about art, artists and artistic legacies. The new cast album is expected to be released in the U.S. in late May."
So surely it will be released over here too.
02/03/06-Whats on stage news
Jenna Russell said she was delighted to be joining the cast of the Menier Chocolate Factory’s Whatsonstage.com Award-winning production of Sondheim’s Sunday in the park with george as the company prepares for a West End transfer to the Wyndham’s Theatre on 23 May 2006 (previews from 13 May).
At a press conference held at the Menier this afternoon to launch the transfer of the show with its new leading lady (Russell takes over from Anna-Jane Casey as Dot), Russell said she hadn’t planned to go straight into another musical after Michael Grandage’s revival of Guys and Dolls - for which she was nominated for both Olivier and Whatsonstage.com Awards – “but this came along and I didn’t have to think about it, I’m delighted to be doing it.”
She told Whatsonstage.com: “I wanted to see this show so much when it opened, that Jane Krakowski and I came to the second preview of it on the first Sunday we had off from Guys and Dolls. We were sat there sobbing. I was so profoundly moved by it.” She added: “I would have loved to have been involved with this from the beginning, if I hadn’t been in Guys and Dolls. I’m really excited about it.”
Dot is the mistress and muse to French impressionist George Seurat, played by Daniel Evans. Sondheim’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1984 musical begins in 19th-century France, where the impoverished painter battles with his art and his personal life. The action then shifts to modern America where Georges’ great-grandson is facing similar problems.
At today’s launch event, Russell and Evans sang the title song for an invited audience and were joined by the rest of the company in live performances of “Sunday” and “Putting It Together” from the show.
bravenet.com