“Sunday in the Park with George,” (left to right) Missy Wise Vanderzee and Kevin Webb/Photo: Evan Hanover

The late filmmaker David Lynch frequently mused on what he called “the art life,” a sort of continuous flow state that allowed him to build his life around making art at all times. Incidentally, Lynch also married four times and had many tempestuous relationships with friends and collaborators. The harsh downsides of “the art life” are visited by two generations of artists named George in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Sunday in the Park With George,” now at Chopin Theatre in a solid production from Kokandy Productions directed by Derek Van Barham.

In the years since his death, Sondheim’s name has become synonymous with a distinct form of theater, akin to how one “does Shakespeare.” Producing his harmonically dense and witty works, made in close collaborations with book writers like George Furth and Lapine, is quite the undertaking.

Kokandy’s production of “Sunday” is pretty good, but it misses some undeniable something. That’s fitting, I suppose, as the show’s two protagonists, Georges Seurat and a fictional modern artist named George, are always searching for their own something to the detriment of their relationships. Staged in the downstairs space at the Chopin (Kokandy’s production of “Hair” is running upstairs), with Seurat’s sketches and studies strewn on the walls, this is a very intimate “Sunday,” focused less on the grandeur of Seurat’s pointillist magnum opus “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” (1884) and more on the cerebral tortures of being an artist.

Nick Sula’s musical direction is excellent, with both the cast and the pit’s chamber group (led by Evelyn Ryan) delivering the first act’s choral and contrapuntal moments with requisite texture and color. The solo numbers, however, lack a certain incisiveness. I hate holding actors to a standard set by a premiere production, but the original Georges and Dot simply broke the mold.

“Sunday in the Park with George,” (left to right) Z Moore, Rachel Carreras, Jack Saunders, Ella Carson, Emily Holland, Samantha Ringor, Abraham Shaw and Danny Andrew Bennett/Photo: Evan Hanover

All things being equal, Kevin Webb and Missy Wise Vanderzee are excellent actors, with Georges’ frantic “Dog Song” and Dot’s legendary ballad “We Do Not Belong Together” as standouts. “Sunday”’s synth-inflected, eighties-set second act is where this production really got going for me.

For this satire par excellence of the (then-)contemporary art world, the space transforms into a fussy gallery where a sculptor named George (who may or may not be Seurat’s great-grandson) and his grandmother Marie present his latest “Chromolume” which is inspired by “La Grande Jatte.” G “Max” Maxin IV’s set and lighting design are in perfect lockstep here, allowing for the “Chromolume” to serve as its own art object while also gently sending it up.

Producing Sondheim is a high bar to clear, but a middling production of his work is still an opportunity to spend time with one of the last century’s finest dramatists and composers. When I say Kokandy’s “Sunday” falls short, it actually acquits itself quite well. That’s another harsh part of “the art life”—high expectations.

“Sunday in the Park with George,” Kokandy Productions at Chopin Theatre, 1543 West Division, through November 1.