SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE IN THE NY TIMES

Roundabout’s Sunday in the Park with George has been nominated for 9 Tony Awards including Best Revival of a Musical, Best Actor in a Musical (Daniel Evans) and Best Actress in a Musical (Jenna Russell). It is currently playing at Studio 54 on Broadway through June 29, 2008.

 

The New York Times

May 28, 2008

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/theater/28evan.html?_r=1&ref=theater&oref=slogin

 

Connecting Philosophy, Sondheim and Seurat

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

 

The topic of the day’s seminar was “Kripke on Philosophy of Mind and Wittgenstein,” and the first couple of philosophers on the docket began speaking of the seeming possibility of the falsity of necessity and how it can be epistemologically possible to conceive of a metaphysical impossibility. As this was being discussed, a reporter discovered that it is very possible to contract a throbbing headache, and quickly.

 

But next to the reporter, a man sat with the easy and comprehending smile of someone at a folk-rock concert. He was Daniel Evans, currently in the running for a Tony Award for his performance as George in the Roundabout Theater Company’s revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Sunday in the Park With George,” the musical about art according to Seurat. Mr. Evans is a student of philosophy, not in the dilettante sense, but in the real, cram-for-the-exam sense. He just finished his fourth year in a six-year course for a bachelor’s degree in political philosophy. (Attending this seminar, at the City University of New York Graduate Center, was voluntary.) 

 

Under a barrage of Wittgensteinian logic that would break a lesser man, Mr. Evans kept up remarkably good humor. As soon as philosophy professor No. 3 wound up his lesson on, among other things, the appropriate application of the robust truth-conditional theory of meaning to Kripke’s rule following paradox, Mr. Evans dove into his backpack and came up with two bananas: one for himself and one for the fading reporter. “For low blood sugar,” he whispered helpfully.

 

Political philosophy, at least the political part of it, has been an interest for some time, said the boyish Mr. Evans, who arrived at the seminar in the tweed jacket and cap of a gentleman farmer. He then revealed, with a hint of mischief, that he has spent a night in a London police station for spray-painting political graffiti on a government building.

 

And suddenly, the kindly farmer-philosopher became a touch more complicated.

 

Mr. Evans, 34, was born in Rhondda, a small town in south Wales, in a valley once teeming with coal miners, the occupation of his grandfathers. Welsh was the language of his father and siblings when he was growing up. “Sondheim for some reason likes it,” Mr. Evans said. “He said after Russian, Welsh was his favorite sound.” (The impending passage of a bill preserving the Welsh language was the occasion for Mr. Evans’s run-in with the law; he thought the bill was too weak.)

 

There is a yearly cultural festival in Wales, the National Eisteddfod, in which Mr. Evans participated, and which propelled him into a career as a child actor. He went to acting school for a couple of years, then dropped out to join the Royal Shakespeare Company, which he would keep returning to after stints in other subsidized theaters like the National, the Donmar Warehouse and the Royal Court. In 1999 Trevor Nunn picked him to play Candide. Mr. Evans more or less taught himself how to do musical theater. He was nominated for an Olivier Award and became a rare creature: a musical actor with a deep classical background

 

It doesn’t take a casting director to tell what kind of roles Mr. Evans is naturally suited for. Puck, sure. Peter Pan, definitely. Sweeney Todd may be a bit of a stretch.

 

“I was playing young lads in new plays and young lovers in Shakespeare plays,” Mr. Evans said. His first Broadway role was Lysander in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”; his first Olivier Award was for his performance as Charley Kringas in “Merrily We Roll Along,” a musical in which characters start out middle-aged and become younger. An actor in “Merrily” is either most convincing in the beginning or the end. Mr. Evans’s strength was at the end.

 

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/theater/28evan.html?_r=1&ref=theater&oref=slogin