LONG BEACH LIGHT OPERA TRIUMPHS WITH ‘SUNDAY’

Let others say that Stephen Sondheim’s music is cold and clinical. Let them insist that you can’t feel his people or hum his tunes. History will take care of the argument.

Quicker than history (and a lot more enjoyable) is a visit to the Long Beach Terrace Theater, where the Sondheim/James Lapine “Sunday in the Park With George” opened over the weekend.

Aside from attesting to all the best reasons why “Sunday” won (among many awards) a Pulitzer for its authors, the production is by far the best effort put out by the not-always-so-dependable Long Beach Civic Light Opera.

It ranks as a very close second to the Broadway staging--and not just because it happens to be played on the Broadway sets (by Tony Straiges) and in the Broadway costumes (Patricia Zipprodt and Ann Hould-Ward). There are abundant other reasons as well.

Chief among them is the clear, uncluttered direction by Fran Soeder, who has virtually cloned Lapine’s original staging but without subservience. To some extent, the cloning is dictated by the meticulous reconstruction of the Seurat painting, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” on which this musical--especially its first act--is predicated.

“Order . . . Design . . . Tension . . . Balance . . . Harmony . . . “ are the operative words (repeated again and again), as much for the French Impressionist Seurat as for the American Impressionist Sondheim, who applies these fundamental principles to his musical re-creation of a painting in the same way that he presumes the painter did to its creation.

Where the two part company is in what follows. If Act I is a careful reconstruction of beauty in the eye of the beholder (Seurat tells his mother, “What is there is pretty; what the eye arranges is beautiful”), Act II is the sequel to the theorem. That second half deals more fictionally with Seurat’s great grandson--an artist undergoing a crisis of confidence in a technological world where the creation of art has become two parts public relations to one part fund raising and one part creative self-doubt.

The final message is classic enough (take heart, insist his ghostly ancestors, singly and in chorus), but not the manner in which it’s delivered. Lapine’s book and Sondheim’s music and lyrics create an architecture for “Sunday in the Park” every bit as intricate and assured as the architecture of Seurat’s “Sunday Afternoon.”

Hummable tunes? There could hardly be a more beautiful or touching or accessible song than “Children and Art,” described as the only valid human legacy by Seurat’s daughter Marie (Pamela Myers, who has never been better and who also plays the pivotal role of Seurat’s mistress Dot). Or “We Do Not Belong Together,” a song of parting that is given a bit less passion by Myers than it deserves.

Contrary to common misapprehension, Sondheim does not dissect an emotion without also giving us the emotion itself. Where other songwriters load up on empty calories for the sake of a jingle, Sondheim makes each word count.

That he makes us think as well as feel (as he does most clearly in the extraordinary “Finishing the Hat”) is entirely to his credit. But thought never comes at the expense of sentiment. Sondheim has never been more spare or more rigorous--or in closer touch with the complex tumult of emotions that govern the creative impulse--than in “Sunday in the Park.”

If he is served impeccably by Myers as Dot and the aged Marie (proving she has not only the vocal fortitude for Sondheim’s complexities, but also humor and great appeal), at least the same applies to Robert Yacko in the dual role of Seurat and Seurat’s great-grandson. It is a clean, reflective, melancholy and intense performance.

Director Soeder also chose the balance of the company astutely. There’s not a disappointment in it. Where sound engineering has been a recurring problem at the Terrace, William A. Hennigh’s sound for “Sunday in the Park” goes off without a hitch. (A fleeting, momentary scratch in somebody’s body mike at Sunday’s matinee was the singular reminder of our slavishness to technology.)

Paulie Jenkins’ lighting is first-class--and never better than in the way it falls like liquid silver about the shoulders of the boys in the “Boys Bathing” interlude.

Do you have to be a Sondheim fan to appreciate the refinements of “Sunday in the Park”? Its layered structuring? The careful correlation of form and content? No doubt it helps. It does require the mind-set of a museum visit--the patient expectation of something deep and rich.

Sondheim fans wouldn’t dream of missing “Sunday’s” Southern California premiere. Far more exciting is the prospect of the uninitiated who will come for the first time on the strength of the show’s reputation and go away mesmerized and ensnared forever.

It’s that good--and it’s worth noting that no theater in Los Angeles could be persuaded to book or stage “Sunday in the Park.” “Too expensive” was the refrain. So Long Beach CLO is to be commended for jumping in and daring what no other organization in Southern California was willing to attempt. But much more important, it has done it in superior fashion and at affordable prices ($11.50-$22.50). Who said too expensive? ‘SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE’

The Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) James Lapine (book) musical presented by the Long Beach Civic Light Opera at the Terrace Theater of the Long Beach Convention Center. Producer Martin Wiviott. Director Fran Soeder. Musical director Steven Smith. Scenery Tony Straiges. Costumes Patricia Zipprodt, Ann Hould-Ward. Lighting Paulie Jenkins. Assistant lighting designer Ilya Mindlin. Sound William A. Hennigh. Chromolume Kirk Thatcher. Laser performance Laser Media Inc. Hair and Makeup Rick Geyer. Technical director Gerard Griffin. Production stage manager Eric Insko. Assistant stage manager David Lober. Cast Robert Yacko, Pamela Myers, Marilyn Child, Carol Swarbrick, Carl Packard, Kimberly Ann Morris, Roberta B. Wall, John Racca, Michael B. Hawkins, Kathryn Skatula, William Malone, Rebecca Eichenberger, Ann Winkowski, James Whitson, Todd Nielsen, Deborah Haworth, Lyle Kanouse. Tickets 11.50-$22.50. Performances Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8:30 p.m., Sundays 2:30 p.m. and Saturdays (Oct. 25 and Nov. 1 only) at 2:30 p.m. Ends Nov. 2 (213-436-3661).