'Sunday in the Park with George' review: Kokandy goes immersive

Even those unfamiliar with Sunday in the Park with George may have seen the musical in the news lately: Jonathan Bailey is slated to star as George Seurat at London’s Barbican Theatre next summer. (Ariana Grande was supposed to appear opposite him, but withdrew suddenly.) The news was top of mind as I considered what —or who—draws us to the theater.

Kokandy Productions’ revival, presented in Chopin Theatre’s wonderfully kitchy Downstairs Studio in Chicago’s Wicker Park, aims to raise the profile of the city’s non-union musical theater community. It follows in the footsteps of its five-star revival of Hair and Jekyll & Hyde, which returns this fall for a return engagement after a sold-out run.

Kokandy distinguishes itself once again. This is Chicago’s non-union theater scene at full strength.

Inside the painting, up close

Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, directed and choreographed by Derek Van Barham, is inspired by the French pointillist painter’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” housed in Chicago’s Art Institute. Act I follows a fictionalized version of Seurat as he sets about creating his masterpiece. Act II takes place a century later, following the artist’s great-grandson as he struggles with his own artistic identity.

The cast of Kokandy Productions' "Sunday in the Park with George." — The cast of Kokandy Productions’ “Sunday in the Park with George.” Photo by Evan Hanover.

The theater-in-the-round immerses the audience deep into the act of creation. A boatman, nurse, and soldiers depicted in the painting flit to and fro between seats; a baker offers imaginary bread to theatergoers. On opening night, some ensemble members chewed the scenery, delivering lines with perhaps too much force than the space requires. But maybe that’s to be expected from characters so much larger than life that they leap off a painting.

Any melodramatic notes, though, are counterweighted by realistic, gripping performances from its two central characters: Kevin Webb as Seurat (and later his descendant) and Missy Wise Vanderzee as his lover and muse, Dot. Webb humanizes Seurat’s complexities—an artist fully consumed by his work, unable to take Dot out on the town, but self-aware and ultimately lovable. Vanderzee’s Dot, frustrated by George’s lack of attention while trying to remain compassionate, ultimately finds the agency to take charge of her own life, leaving him for a baker who whisks her to America.

This production reveals something a splashier one might not: “Order. Design. Tension. Balance. Harmony,” George declares in the Act I finale, “Sunday.” This production might add: “Immersive. Intimate. Human.”

(l-r) Z Moore, Kevin Webb, Missy Wise Vanderzee, Danny Andrew Bennett, and Nathe Rowbotham in Kokandy Productions’ "Sunday in the Park with George." — (l-r) Z Moore, Kevin Webb, Missy Wise Vanderzee, Danny Andrew Bennett, and Nathe Rowbotham in Kokandy Productions’ “Sunday in the Park with George.” Photo by Evan Hanover.

Is ‘Sunday in the Park with George’ worth seeing?

Kokandy’s Sunday in the Park with George gets inside Seurat’s famous work, using proximity most productions can’t offer to make the painting’s final tableau feel like an invitation into the artist’s mind.

Chopin Theatre (Downstairs Studio), 1543 W. Division St., Chicago
Notable performers: Kevin Webb, Missy Wise Vanderzee
Running time: Two hours and 30 minutes, one 15-minute intermission
Performances through Nov. 1, 2026

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