Sunday In the Park With George

Synopsis

A celebration of life and art. It is A Sunday Afternoon in Paris, George, a poor impressionist painter brilliantly captures, the young ladies, couples, children, tramps and their dogs enjoying a Sunday afternoon stroll in the park. As George sketches his lover Dot and the painting becomes a work of art, their relationship falls apart. A 100 years later the painting hangs in an art gallery, admired and discussed, studied and criticised, but what happened to the characters in the picture when it was completed? Immortalised forever in a single moment by the painters brush, but life and art goes on.

Our Review:

24 May 2006

There are two ways of looking at Sunday in the Park with George, the 1984 musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine which was revived for a sell-out season at the Menier Chocolate Factory at the end of last year and is now at the Wyndham’s: it is a masterpiece, or just plain arid.

I oscillate between both assessments and still much prefer the next Sondheim/Lapine collaboration, Into the Woods. On the plus side, Sam Buntrock’s production remains as taut as a drawn bow, the projection designs of Timothy Bird (a little messy at the Menier) look gorgeous in the Wyndham’s proscenium, Daniel Evans is a wonderful George, injecting the show with much needed emotional urgency, and Jason Carr’s new orchestrations for just five musicians are brilliant.

George is a modernist artist in two halves. In the first, he's the pointillist painter Georges Seurat, bringing to life his masterpiece on the banks of the Seine, “Sunday Afternoon on the Islan...

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Latest User Review

81.77.218.8) - 22 August 2006:

I love that 'Julia' on the 29th of May (below) says "I've tried my level best to understand the appeal of his work, but in my opinion he's the thinking person's Lloyd Webber". I just love that "but". Yes, Julia, that says a lot. For those who want a stimulating, deeply thought-provoking, emotionally charged (I didn't just weep, I wailed!) experience, then this is for you. For those who don't want to have to do anything as strenuous as 'think' then go see Phantom....

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