The Menier Chocolate Factory production of Stephen Sondheim's Sunday In The Park With George has been named the 2007 Laurence Olivier Award Outstanding Musical Production. The win may prove that actress Jenna Russell is a lucky omen for West End musicals as, in addition to appearing in Sunday In The Park With George, she also led the cast of the 2006 winner Guys And Dolls.
In a famously strong year for West End musicals, the category of Outstanding Musical Production was, with Best New Musical, among the most competitive and eagerly-awaited of the night. Also nominated were the Rufus Norris-directed Cabaret, Andrew Lloyd Webber's revival of Evita, and the high-profile production of The Sound Of Music.
The award was collected by Menier Chocolate Factory Artistic Director David Babini, Director Sam Buntrock and leading duo Jenna Russell and Daniel Evans. They were all delighted by the win. Talking about why the show was such a success Evans said: “Well we have to start with the material, which is an amazing score and an amazing book, and then we add to it the idea of this man, Sam Buntrock, which was to use animation and digital technology to tell the story in an original and meaningful way.”
The Menier Chocolate Factory production of Sondheim and Lapine's Sunday In The Park With George, directed by Sam Buntrock, opened at the Menier in November 2005, receiving such acclaim that it transferred to the Wyndham's in May 2006. The show followed, in the first half, the life and work of pointillist painter Georges Seurat and his muse and love interest Dot. The second half jumped forward to contemporary America, where one of Seurat's descendants was also struggling in the art world.
The production caught the imagination of London audiences not only with its plot, music and performance, but also with its innovative design that used projections to create Seurat's masterpiece Sunday Afternoon On The Island Of La Grande Jatte on stage.
Speaking about the use of digital technology, Buntrock commented: “It means that you can actually go inside the painting, inside his work from the first sketch line to the last dab of paint. I’d like to think that in five or 10 years' time there will be more productions using projections like this. At the moment they are still sometimes seen as something of an unwelcome guest.”
Earlier in the evening designers David Farley and Timothy Bird were recognised for the show's technology-driven design by picking up the Best Set Design award.
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