It’s a familiar painting: the wide, grassy park with the sailboats in the blurry, blue distance. There are soldiers, a reclining boatman, a labrador sniffing the earth. Off to the right, we see a woman in profile, an enormous pink flower decorating her top hat. Strange is the monkey painted at her feet. Stranger still is the moment she inhales and begins to sing.

“It’s hot up here,” she says, setting off a string of complaints. Oh, to be stuck inside of a painting—the stiff posture, the glaring sunlight, the perpetually lit cigars!

From Dec. 1 to 3, the Columbia Musical Theatre Society presented “Sunday in the Park with George” in the Glicker-Milstein Theatre, directed by Caroline Egler, BC ’24. This Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine, follows a fictionalized Georges Seurat as he completes his most famous painting, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.”

Set designers Egler and Melanie Brigham, CC ’24, created a brilliant riff on the artist’s studio: The stage is empty, but for a collection of canvases—narrow white scrims, suspended at the edge like wings. The back wall is an enormous blank page, upon which Seurat’s park scene appeared. Here, the painting unfolds in real time—one tree, in particular, hopped across the composition when George changed his mind. Projections designer Sophie Simons, BC ’25, immersed the audience inside the painter’s world; Simons arranged George’s studio like a Paris salon, suspending Seurat’s art from floor to ceiling. At one point, the studio wall transformed into rows and rows of Follies, whose pointed feet flew up and down in an animated, Monty Python-esque loop. Thomas Doyle, GS ’24, even sang “Color and Light” from behind a scrim, a small section of “A Sunday Afternoon” glowing in front of him and his brush, such that George literally disappeared into his work.

The two leads—Doyle and Catherine Herrera, CC ’25—excelled as George and Dot, standing out among an already stellar ensemble. Doyle beautifully captured Seurat’s solitary, intense demeanor—how George’s whole world unfolds inside experiments of color and light. Doyle’s speaking voice, calm and clear, barely resounds in conversation, yet his singing voice fills the entire theater when alone. Herrera’s voice soared over Sondheim’s shimmering, experimental score, the rhythm of which often mimics Seurat’s repetitive brushstrokes. Her prowess was particularly on display in the opening number “Sunday in the Park with George,” which she sang with a beautiful, bright tone and excellent breath support:

“There are worse things / Than staring at the water / As you’re posing for a picture / After sleeping on the ferry / After getting up at seven / To come over to an island / In the middle of a river / Half an hour from the city / On a Sunday,” she sings in a single breath.

It’s hard to imagine an ensemble better equipped to bring Seurat’s work to life. Eleanor Babwin, BC ’24, and Lauren Unterberger, CC ’24, played Mr. and Mrs., a hilarious duo of South Carolinian tourists whose every coming and going sent waves of applause throughout the audience. Their comedic timing was outstanding, particularly when it came to their love of pâtisserie and their half-serious plan to kidnap Louis the baker. Pimprenelle Behaeghel, BC ’24, brought incredible complexity to the Boatman, leaping back and forth between jaded, itinerant philosopher and quiet, misunderstood animal-lover. Amelia Mason, BC ’24, and Maxwell Beck Seelig, CC ’26, had wonderful chemistry as Yvonne and Jules, the art world’s most pretentious power-couple. They paraded around the stage, stealing every scene with their bewildered expressions and hilarious bouts of laughter, neighing as if they were secretly show horses with fine arts degrees.

Costume designers Lonnie Miller, BC ’25, and Lilienne Shore Kilgore-Brown, CC ’24, recreated Seurat’s characters in especially bright colors, as if reviving a wardrobe that spent over a hundred years in a museum. They put together a beautiful—and remarkably structurally sound—blue dress for Dot, complete with a chicken-wire-enforced skirt. As indicated in the script, the dress had to open and close, such that Herrera could step out of it mid-modeling session. They also wove brightly colored ribbons into a white crinoline for Dot’s daughter, Marie. The skirt is a collage, built piece by piece from the wardrobes of other characters, illustrating beautifully that Marie’s life—as well as George’s—is woven from the lives of others.

If at any point an audience member happened to swivel around in their seat, they would have seen music director Eliza Heath, BC ’25, conducting on an HD monitor below the sound booth. To cope with space constraints, Heath, along with 13 musicians, were tucked away upstairs in the Dasha Epstein Green Room. Among the musicals that have been performed in the GMT, “Sunday in the Park with George” is the first to entirely separate the ensemble from the pit. In the past, CMTS and the Barnard Theater Department have either suspended the orchestra above the stage or sectioned them off in a corner.

“The GMT is so small. There is no place on that stage for an orchestra—to be able to still make that painting,” Egler explained in an interview with Spectator.

Egler chose “Sunday in the Park with George” for two main reasons. The first was to celebrate Sondheim, who passed away last year, and the joy and purpose he found in his art, in spite of its sacrifices and solitudes. The second reason was to celebrate art as a way of connecting with others. Of course, this connection isn’t limited to the creative team of this particular show, however enormous it might be, but rather extends into campus and far beyond.

“Because the show is so much about one artist’s journey, we wanted to showcase other people who make art on campus,” Egler said.

Just outside the theater, there is a small gallery on the walls—a collaboration with the Useless Art Society, curated by assistant director Is Perlman, CC ’25. The exhibition, named after George’s declaration “I am not hiding behind my canvas / I am living in it,” showcases the work of Perlman; Quoc Bui, CC ’26; Lauren Lee, BC ’23; Abigail Duclos, BC ’23; Emily Lord, SEAS ’23; Kathryn Whitten, CC ’24; Macy Sinreich, CC ’25; and Bella Williams, BC ’26. There are also four familiar canvases below the stairs—attacked with bits of green and orange, then slashed across the middle. These came from the recent Columbia University Performing Arts League Special Project, “Camp Cattywampus,” during which Williams painted onstage as camper Olive.

“It’s such a beautiful story to be able to tell, especially coming off of the pandemic and coming off of not really being able to do theater live like this—with a huge cast and a huge orchestra. It was the perfect show to be able to have that theme of connection come through,” Egler said.

Remarkably, Egler’s production changed the emotional arc of the play. She wanted to move away from the rather downhill trajectory of the text itself—Dot’s frustrated aspirations, George’s early death, his great-grandson George’s professional anxieties. Rather than emphasize the stifling aspects of each George’s life, Egler drew out the joy and the silliness. She inserted a delightful comedy ballet for “Everybody Loves Louis,” choreographed by Julia Patella, BC ’25, and even hired a pastry chef, Abigail Svelan, BC ’25, whose cupcakes and cream puffs made for some of the most hilarious prop comedy.

At the end of the show, there is an exhibition held for the second George’s latest “chromolume”—a flashing, kaleidoscopic spaceship of a sculpture, crafted by Simons using the vanity from the Barnard Theater Department’s “Pirandello Project.” Pacing the crowded gallery, he collects bright ribbons from the cast members, which Egler explained symbolize emotional connection. They are little gifts of color, little pieces of the characters themselves. Crucially, the cast never runs out of ribbons, just as Seurat’s figures never run out of color, even after a century on the wall.