Correction appendedA white backdrop creates a two-dimensional sensation in the Spingold's Mainstage. Overlapping, heart-shaped spotlights cast dramatic shadows over the two solitary objects on stage: a splintered wooden easel and a stool. Panels of white-painted wood frame the usual drape for curtains. And the 10-piece orchestra, under the leadership of musical director Todd C. Gordon, tooted behind the words of Postimpressionist painter Georges Seurat.

"White: a blank page or canvas," Robert St. Laurence '11, as Seurat, projects to the audience of Brandeis Theater Company's production of Sunday in the Park with George. "His favorite-so many possibilities."

Sixty-five singers, actors and dancers crowded the stage this weekend to paint the life and legacy of Seurat, who riled up the 1880s Parisian art world with his pointillist expression. The show, originally a musical collaboration between composer Stephen Sondheim and librettist James Lapine, examines the bilateral expression of minute dots of color that collectively form a larger image and meaning.

Highlighted by unequivocal scenery and choreography, Brandeis Theater Collective's Sunday in the Park with George, directed by the Office of the Arts Director Scott Edmiston, immersed community members in a story of misunderstanding and the reconciliation of desires with reality.

The storyline, which captures the conversations of 19th-century Parisian bourgeois-Seurat's unsuspecting subjects-enjoying their day off along the Seine evokes the artist's personal struggle between observation and interaction. Caught between his passion for art and his relationship with his mistress, Dot, played by McCaela Donovan (GRAD), Seurat ultimately isolates himself, dying at the age of 31 and leaving but a faint lineage represented with the small white splotch of a baby blanket in his most notable painting, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte."

At the end of the first act, a breathtaking, framed silkscreen version of the painting lowers at the trigger of Laurence's sweeping hand gestures. Gasps heard throughout the theater signal the striking beauty and unquestionable correlations between the figures in the painting drawn by Seurat and the characters onstage. The scene, enhanced by the University Chorus singing on the middle platforms of the theater wings, provided surround sound for the finales of both acts and created an aura of endless possibility.

The artist's ability to create, erase and manipulate the scene is one of the highlights of the production, and much of the magic is thanks to set designer Carlos Aguilar (GRAD).

Complementing Aguilar's scenery, the precise and subtle choreography of Julie Judson '11 emphasizes the detail in Seurat's work and rides on the syncopation of Sondheim's musical composition. In the second act's opening song, "It's Hot Up Here," the characters' randomization of movement and sudden twitching illuminate the unbearable nature of posing for Seurat in the summer heat.

The light design by Ben Williams (GRAD) accentuates skillful staging, as seen in "Putting it Together," when the ensemble strikes poses shadowed with pink-tinted lights around Blair, Samantha Richert (GRAD), an art collector with attitude who comes to view the museum showing of "Chromolume #7." The piece, the creation of Seurat's great-grandson George (Ben Rosenblatt (GRAD)), is a 12-screen multimedia projection of varying colors and lights and serves as a sculptural adaptation of Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte."

The second act, set in 1984, revolves around the two remaining members of Seurat's family tree-Seurat's great-grandson, George, and Marie, Seurat's unclaimed child played by Prof. Pamela Wolfe (MUS). The modern-day scenes in contrast to the traditional Parisian atmosphere of the painting are dark and lonely without the animate chatter of townspeople.

Watching George regain inspiration in his art is an interesting exploration of personal ambition; but overall, the second act is complex and difficult to access. When Rosenblatt performs "Move On" with Donovan and Laurence near the end of the show, audience members are easily confused by the multidimensional interaction between the characters that transcends generations.

The chemistry between Seurat and Dot begins to wane at certain points in the show, but it is challenging to evaluate how much the painter's frustrating incapacity to connect with people generally contributes to such interactions. One vibrant, breathtaking scene is "Color and Light," when Dot sits by her vanity dabbing herself with a powder puff as George stands on a scaffold behind his silkscreen canvas, dabbing at the painting with his brush. The parallels in motion and the lyrics of the song illustrate the tension between the lovers.

St. Laurence's performance was generally indistinguishable from those of the graduate student actors. Donovan, with her captivating vocals and emotion-sated performance, was the topic of chatter among audience members during intermission. Her range of talent was exemplified in "Everybody Loves Louis," when she alternated between a melodramatic appeal to George's affection and jovial mockery of her future husband, Louis the baker, played by Sam Fuchs '11.

From the boatman (Robert McFadden (GRAD)) to the soldiers (Jared Greenberg '12 and Aidan Horowitz '12) and shop girls (Ellyn Getz '13 and Meg Evans '12), the ensemble in this production was central to the plot due to Seurat's connection with the subjects in his paintings.

The critical art connoisseurs Jules and Yvonne, played by Levi Rion (GRAD) and Tanya Dougherty (GRAD), seem to represent the public reaction to Seurat's work in 19th-century France. In oddly interspersed dialogues throughout the plot, the two scoff at the simplicity of Seurat's pointillism-producing millions of minute colorful dots-and neglect to understand the larger meaning.

The comical out-of-town wanderers, Mister, played by Johnnie McQuarley (GRAD) and Missus, played by (Rebecca Miller '13), at first appear irrelevant to the overall plot and are not included in ensemble pieces when all of Seurat's subjects unite on stage.

However, they provide an important yet slightly too subtle transition into the second act, contrasting Seurat's reaction to wealth and publicity to that of the younger George, who sings about the importance of financing art and adhering to the guidelines of reality.

Ultimately, BTC's luminous production of Sunday in the Park with George presented a unique and skillful adaptation of the musical.

The musical's underlying artistic meaning colors the alternating plots of one family's past and present, and while the lyrics acknowledge that "Art isn't easy," the show as a whole provides audience members with a preliminary avenue for interpretation.

Correction: The article originally misspelled the name of a crew member. The set designer is Carlos Aguilar, not Carlos Anguilar.