Sunday In The Park With George (Special Edition)

Last Minute Sales & Specials

"A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by George Seurat is one of the great paintings of the world, and in "Sunday In The Park With George", book writer James Lapine and composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim bring a story based on the work brilliantly to life. While the painting depicts people gathered on an island in the Seine, the musical goes beyond simply describing their lives. It is an exploration of art, of love, of commitment. Seurat connected dots to create images; Lapine and Sondheim use connection as the heart of all our relationships. "Connect", the artist George tells himself in the climactic moment of "Sunday In The Park With George". Connect. All around him, his life is in shambles. Dot, his mistress and model, is leaving for America with Louis, the baker. His mother complains that she was never able to get through to him. The other Parisians on the island of Grande Jatte in the middle of the Seine are fighting and bickering. In a desperate attempt to bring sense into this chaos, George commands everyone: Order... Design... Tension... Balance... Harmony... Slowly, but deliberately, each of the Sunday afternoon park-goers who have been his models - the soldiers and the shopkeepers, the boatman and the baker, and, most especially, Dot - takes a designated place. The glorious depiction of George Seurat's mammoth painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" comes to life "by the cool, blue triangular water on the soft, green elliptical grass." The characters are united, but, significantly, George is apart downstage, the artist alone with his work, trying to connect. Of course, connecting is just what Seurat was doing in his paintings. Inspired by how threads in a carpet became flowers in the eyes of the beholder, Seurat chose to use dots (blots in the case of "Grande Jatte"). Different colors would fuse, creating a pointillist view of life.