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Editorial Review:
Stephen Sondheim's landmark 1984 musical Sunday in the Park with George is a fictional representation of maverick French Impressionist painter Georges Seurat's efforts to create his masterpiece, Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte. Seurat, played by Mandy Patinkin, is obsessed with his work, to the frustration of his mistress, Dot (Bernadette Peters). Along the way, we meet many other characters--whoever happens to be in the park that Sunday--who eventually become part of the canvas.

Act 2 fast-forwards 100 years. Patinkin now plays Seurat's great-grandson, George, himself a frustrated artist. (Peters plays his grandmother--Seurat and Dot's daughter.) In the score's best-known song, "Putting It Together," George (and Sondheim himself) explains the hazards of trying to create art while also confronting the reality of having to pay for it. In a search for inspiration, George travels to the original island where Seurat created the painting. As with Sondheim and cocreator James Lapine's next collaboration, Into the Woods, Sunday is often criticized for redirecting its focus in the second act instead of letting the first act stand by itself as a complete work. The second act, however, is the emotional core of the show, as George confronts all the feelings his great-grandfather had repressed so many years ago.

Stephen Sondheim's brilliant score is remarkable for its combination of vivid colors (listen to his dots of sound that represent Seurat's pointillistic style of painting), character pieces, and sheer beauty. The cast is terrific, and the show, aced out of most of the 1984 Tony Awards by La Cage aux Folles, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Recorded before a live audience, Sunday is especially entertaining on video, as the staging elements bring out the full humor and inventiveness of the show, and it is astonishing to see the disparate characters form themselves into the elements of the familiar painting. So many great musicals are banished to the memories of those who attended live or--even worse--immortalized as inferior movies. Sunday in the Park with George is an absolute must-see for anyone interested in musical theatre, and a must-own for anyone with a passion for it. The DVD includes an audio track with commentary by Sondheim, Lapine, Patinkin, and Peters. --David Horiuchi

Sunday in the Park with George [Region 2] Reviews:
This is Music?
2009-11-27 - A musical, in my opinion, is a play (or, in some cases, a movie) that makes you feel better after viewing or has at least a song or two that you walk away humming. I hardly recognized this as "music", let along finding a song I could hum. As for feeling better--I won't even go there.

A Stunning Musical Despite Act II
2009-11-14 - For those who know this musical, whether in its original cast version or its UK revival, the visceral beauty of the work will come as no surprise. It is the show that converted me to Stephen Sondheim, made me hungry to learn more about the mysterious, short-lived Georges Seurat and convinced me that Bernadette Peters can excel at any role she takes. Ironically, and even for the period during which it was produced, the video's color resolution could have been far better, since Seurat's pigments for La Grande Jatte paled over time, too. Still, this is a work of sublime beauty and fine performances. Composed in almost symphonic form with perfect casting and jaw-dropping stagecraft, it was worthy of the Pulitzer Prize it received. James Lapine's book is filled with moments of great warmth, rage and humor. It taps the universals in one story with grace and polish.

I will risk the consternation of those who believe the second act is a true cousin to the first. I do not. I would have preferred a slightly longer first act performed without break for two reasons. First, Act I tells most of us a story about which we never knew. While the fictions Lapine injected into Act I were necessary -- we know so little about Seurat's reclusive life after all -- Act II speaks to us in large part about the callousness of the contemporary art market we already know. For a little while, the book falters, then recovers its footing about halfway through.

In an era of cerebral musicals and pale revivals, some of which hold up onstage but not on recordings, Sunday in the Park with George is one hell of a musical. It has everything we seek when we go to musical theater; and the video producers really gave it a go, creating the permanent document of a timeless work and an era that has passed. The cast is uniformly fine.

As one who completed an advanced degree in art history, I also have a special love for the painting and artist about whom the musical is based. In the subtext of Sondheim's work, then, is the admonition that we not forget these heroic figures, and that we pass their stories on to our children. I agree. Five easy stars.

One of the 5 Greatest Musicals of all time!!!
2009-02-23 - I was blessed to see this production live, and I have watched this filmed performance about 10 times, and listnened to the cast recording about 100 times...and each and every time I discover something deep and beautiful and new! It says so much about...so much! Patinkin and Peters bring such tenderness to the work...creating a perfect balance to Sondheim's purposely "bizarre, fixed, cold" masterpiece! And the end makes me get misty eyed each and ever time! It's hard to "Move On" from Sunday--It will stay with you forever...

Sunday in the Park
2008-11-23 - I purchased this video to show in my art history class. The musical shows such beautiful set designs, and it gives the viewer an idea of the kind of art that Georges Seurat created. My students loved the video, and we enjoyed creating artwork using pointillism.

Mandy Patinkin is a god among men
2008-07-17 - This is a fabulous production. The quality of cinematography is much higher than earlier Sondheim video releases. This probably has to do with the way that the set design itself tells a story along with the characters. The environment itself is so malleable it's like another character. It's not a simple, straight forward story, though, like Into the Woods or Sweeney Todd, which can make it initially confusing and offputting to the general public. Definitely worth watching though.