Sunday in the Park with George is poised for a transfer from London to Broadway. The Menier Chocolate Factory production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical, which transferred to the West End's Wyndham's Theatre in May, will reach the end of its current run there on September 2. But according to press advertisements, it is now projecting a move to Broadway.
"We are in advance talks to try to get the show to open on Broadway next year," Menier Artistic Director David Babani confirmed to Theatre.com. "We're all trying very hard to make it happen, and everyone is very supportive of the notion." Composer Sondheim was named as one of those in agreement with those plans. Babani wasn't, however, able to name possible Broadway producing partners or a likely theater. The West End engagement, he added, "exceeded expectations." Its profitability, which is a closely guarded secret in London where weekly figures are not released, is not known, and with another week to run, the books are not closed yet.
Sam Buntrock's production, which stars Daniel Evans as George and Jenna Russell as Dot, opened at the West End Wyndham's Theatre on May 23. In his Theatre.com Review of the transfer, Matt Wolf wrote: "Sam Buntrock's approach to a musical steeped in emotional diffidence is, paradoxically, overwhelmingly moving and alive, as if to rebuff in one clean, shattering stroke the argument—still advanced, to my astonishment, in some quarters—that Stephen Sondheim is too cool by half. Not this time he ain't. Anatomising an Impressionist master whose work, we're repeatedly told, was his life, Sunday In the Park fairly throbs with the tension of a creator… As reorchestrated for five musicians in a playhouse that roughly approximates this musical's first Broadway berth, the intimate Booth, Sunday hasn't so much been made smaller as it has quite simply intensified: even enthusiasts of James Lapine's defining original production, and nobody was more of one than I, may be unprepared for the layers of feeling Buntrock and an outstanding cast have unearthed here… Give us more to see," Dot urges George early in a show which is itself about upping the creative ante, and this Sunday has miraculously done just that, making clear what more there is to see about a musical so saturated with feeling that one is discovered glimpsing the stage through a haze of tears."
