Sunday in The Park With George



A Pulitzer Prize-winning Musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. It was the first in a series of shows the two collaborated on, among them Into the Woods and Passion.

It centers, in the first act, on a fictionalized version of Georges Seurat and his mistress, Dot. Dot loves Georges for his passion and his art, but can't understand him, nor does he pay as much attention to her as she needs. They are caught up by the stream of petty rivalries, jealousies, spats, and smug feelings that dominate the interactions of Parisians on their Sunday visits to La Grande Jatte. As criticism of his work mounts, Georges grows less and less attentive of the world around him, even as his own mother laments that they're destroying the beautiful skyline with their ugly tower. Much to everyone's surprise, Georges manages to create a painting that is not only a masterful display of color and light, but an image of a perfect, peaceful Sunday that has never, really, existed, but outlives all the squabbles and smugness of its actual subjects.

The second act focuses on Georges's fictional descendant, George, who is also an artist. George's particular genre, however, "Chromolumes," are not only expensive, but utterly meaningless to everyone except George. Even the audience. How is he supposed to find inspiration, and, perhaps just as importantly, funding, in a world that really doesn't care about originality?

It opened on Broadway in 1984 and was revived in 2008.


 * All Musicals Are Adaptations: Averted, unless you count it being based on a painting.
 * And You Were There: The second act focuses on a group of characters played by the same actors as those in the first.
 * Betty and Veronica: After leaving Georges, the intelligent but difficult artist (Veronica) Dot marries the pleasant but boring baker, Louis (Betty). However, she still loves Georges.
 * Break Up Song: "We Do Not Belong Together."
 * Deadpan Snarker: Georges and Dot have a lot of this. The Boatman is even more abrasive.
 * The Eighties: Act II
 * Epic Song: "Sunday", of course.
 * Everything Has Rhythm: George paints to the rhythm of "Color and Light". Dot puts on makeup to the rhythm of same.
 * Everything's Better with Monkeys: Brings attention to the fact that there's a monkey in the original painting for no apparent reason.
 * Not in the musical, but Seurat has the woman holding a monkey on a leash to imply that she's a prostitute: In nineteenth century slang, 'singesse' (female monkey in French) meant prostitute. Though at one point in "It's Hot Up Here" Dot laments she doesn't want to be remembered with the monkey; that may be why.
 * Fashion Dissonance: The show was originally released in the 1980's, and Act II is set in that same period (supposed to be a hundred years after the painting was finished.) When the show is staged nowadays, there is a (possibly intentional) side effect of making the 1980's fashion look equally absurd as the 1880's.
 * Final Love Duet: "Move On," which features the Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
 * Gossipy Hens: Several of the minor characters.
 * Grief Song: "Lesson #8."
 * I Am What I Am: "Finishing The Hat," doubling as a BSOD Song.
 * Identical Grandson: Georges and George.
 * Intelligence Equals Isolation: Georges is a straight example of this, bordering on Loners Are Freaks - his genius is misunderstood, and he frequently drives people away with his eccentricity and stubbornness. George-his-grandson appears to be social, amiable, and friendly enough, but it turns out that he's cultivated this to navigate the politics of modern art and sponsorship.
 * Ironic Hell: Within the painting itself, the residents of the painting are trapped, immobile, forever, in a blazing hot summer day on the river. Furthermore, their pettiness and selfishness in real life has in no way diminished - but they look like they're a perfectly happy, peaceful, and beautiful congregation.
 * "And you are out of all proportion!"
 * Irony: A little version, but the song "No Life" done by an artist/critic and his wife, consists of them criticizing and looking down on Seurat's painting "Une Baignade, Asnieres" ("The Bathers), for having "no life" - when in fact the painting is a tableau vivante, and therefore made up of living people all posed. It's as lively as anything!
 * "These things get hung / And then they're gone", sings Jules of Georges' painting. Of course, Georges' work is still famous today, while Jules is inferred to be an artist popular in Georges' time, but now lost to obscurity.
 * Leitmotif: Try to find a number in this show that isn't repeated somewhere else. A major contender, however, has to be "Color and Light."
 * Massive Multiplayer Ensemble Number: "It's Hot Up Here" fits.
 * Monochrome Casting: Enforced Trope. It's based on a painting. Everyone in the painting is white. And as it's the same cast between Acts I and II, this show is pretty much always all-white.
 * The Muse: Dot to Georges.
 * Muse Abuse: Georges' interest in the people around him is almost totally predicated on whether he wants to sketch them or not. He's not always gracious about it either, and ends up losing his true love Dot.
 * Oscar Bait: Or Tony Bait, though it won the Pulitzer Prize and not the Tony Award. This is a classic example of what William Goldman would call a "Snob Hit," being full of Genius Bonuses and being very much about art and art criticism.
 * One Steve Limit: Averted, especially in Act One. Not only do you have Georges and George across separate acts, but Act One has a Louis and a Louise, Franz and Frida, and a Celeste #1 and Celeste #2. It's probably deliberate.
 * Replacement Love Interest: "I have another woman now." "They're all the same woman!" "Variations on a theme!"
 * Scenery Porn:
 * 1984: The entire painting was recreated three-dimensionally on stage, using standing cut-outs for the background characters, allowing Georges to literally create the painting by bringing things into the frame.
 * 2008: The entire stage was completely white, and the backgrounds and ensemble characters were added using projections, allowing Georges to literally create the painting with a wave of his brush.
 * Straw Critic: The critics who accuse Georges Seurat's work of having "No Life" have much in common with Sondheim's.