Sunday, October 25, 2009

Color and Light

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I used to go to a lot of Broadway shows when I was in high school in New York City. After I ended up in St. Louis, my wife and I went occasionally when we were back visiting my family. They became less and less interesting to me over time - they turned into shallow, mass-appeal extravaganzas. No more Mama Mia for me.

However, one of my all-time favorites is Stephen Sondheim and James Lepine's Sunday In The Park with George. It is based on the obsessions of painter Georges Seurat's while creating the masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (click on the thumbnail for a bigger version). It has both beauty and substance. Early in the show, Seurat sings to a young woman while painting on the island:

Color and light.
There's only color and light.
Yellow and white.
Just blue and yellow and white.
Look at the air, miss-
See what I mean?
No, look over there, miss-
That's done with green...
Conjoined with orange...

I thought of this song while editing the photo for this post, taken in Forest Park yesterday.

3 comments:

cieldequimper said...

What a beautiful post and of course, an almost pointillist photo to go with the caption.

Virginia said...

And indeed it looks like a painting. Just beautiful B!
And a few years ago someone gave us tickets to The Lion King and we took the oldest girls. I was a little wary but it was just fabulous. We don't see much Broadway down here in Bama so we're easily impressed! :)
V

Wayne said...

I've become very selective of the shows I go to now as well. I've been to hundreds of plays and musicals in a previous life however.

I saw Sunday In The Park With George on Broadway starring Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin.

Evita is one of my favourite musicals but things started going down hill after that. No Lion King for me either. Jungle Book, the movie, has a couple of neat tunes but without Phil Harris or Louis Prima it just wouldn't be the same.

If Disney has anything to do with a musical it's all about the merchandising.