Sunday in the Park with George

Sunday in the Park with George
Original Broadway Playbill Cover
Music	Stephen Sondheim
Lyrics	Stephen Sondheim
Book	James Lapine
Basis	Georges Seurat's painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
Productions	1984 Broadway 1990 West End 1994 Broadway concert 2006 West End revival 2008 Broadway revival 2017 Broadway revival
Awards	1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama 1985 Drama Desk Outstanding Musical 1985 Drama Desk Outstanding Book 1985 Drama Desk Outstanding Lyrics 1991 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical 2007 Olivier Outstanding Musical

Sunday in the Park with George is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. The musical was inspired by the painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat. A complex work revolving around a fictionalized Seurat immersed in single-minded concentration while painting his masterpiece and the people in that picture, the Broadway production opened in 1984.

The musical won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, two Tony Awards for design (and a nomination for Best Musical), numerous Drama Desk Awards, the 1991 Olivier Award for Best Musical and the 2007 Olivier Award for Outstanding Musical Production. It has enjoyed several major revivals, including the 2005-06 UK production first presented at the Menier Chocolate Factory and its subsequent 2008 Broadway transfer.

In 1884, Georges Seurat, known as George in the musical, is sketching studies for his famous painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. He announces to the audience: "White, a blank page or canvas. The challenge: bring order to the whole, through design, composition, tension, balance, light and harmony." He conjures up the island, a small suburban park, around him, and retains some control of his surroundings as he draws them. His longtime mistress, Dot, models for him, despite her frustrations at having to get up early on a Sunday. ("Sunday in the Park with George"). More regulars at the park begin to arrive: a quarrelsome Old Lady and her Nurse discuss how Paris is changing to accommodate a tower for the International Exposition, but the Nurse is more interested in a German coachman, Franz. The quiet of the park is interrupted by a group of rude bathers. George freezes them with a gesture, setting them as the subjects of his first painting, Bathers at Asnières. The setting abruptly changes to a gallery where the painting is on display. Jules (a more successful artist friend of George's) and his wife Yvonne think George's work has "No Life." Back on the island, Jules and Yvonne have a short discussion with George and depart. They take their coachman Franz with them, interrupting Franz's rendezvous with the Nurse. Dot, who has grown tired of standing still in the early morning sunlight, leaves the park mollified after George promises to take her to the Follies. George approaches the Old Lady, revealed to be his mother, and requests to draw her, but she bluntly refuses.