As if he sees you and he doesn’t all at once.

 After Stephen Sondheim's debacle

of Merrily We Roll Along 

(16 performances and scathing reviews),

he was ready to quit doing musical theatre.

But just in the nick of time...inspiration!

"A Sunday Afternoon On The Island of La Grande Jatte"

by George Seurat, the French Pointillist painter,

which both he and James Lapine (book writer supreme)

 became fascinated with:

Voila! Sunday in the Park with George.

.Mandy Patinkin starred as George
(above with the beard, not the eye-patch!)

and Bernadette Peters (below) played his girlfriend, 

appropriately named Dot.

 In rehearsal with Bernadette

and Mandy.

The show began Off-Broadway at Playwright's Horizon in 1983,

and then transferred to Broadway the following year,

for just over 600 performances.  

And yes, like most Sondheim shows,

it lost money.

 The musical is a fictionalized account of 

George and Dot.

The truer tale:

Seurat's common-law wife was Madeleine Knobloch, and

she did not leave him for a romance with "Louie The Baker" 

nor did she travel to America. 

She was living with Seurat when he died, at the age of 31.

Madeline died of cirrhosis of the liver at 35.

 In Act 2, Mandy played George and Dot's great-grandson,

and Bernadette became Marie, his grandmother,

and supposedly the child of Dot and George.

 Again, in real life, George and Dot's children

(they had two)

both died in infancy.

Although the show was awarded several

Drama Desks,

and a Pulitzer Prize for Drama

(and an Olivier for Best Musical when it played the West End),

only 2 of their 10 Tony nominations brought wins:

Scenic Design and Lighting.

This was the year of La Cage Aux Folles, 

and Jerry Herman's "music you can hum" barb!

 A 2017 revival with Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford

was well reviewed and is on its way to the West End,

as I type!

Now just hoping for a cast album! 

Georges old and new...

Reviewer Frank Rich of the NYTimes

called the original production,

 "an audacious, haunting and, in its own intensely personal way, 

touching work. 

Even when it fails – as it does on occasion – Sunday in the Park is setting the stage for even more sustained theatrical innovations yet to come."

Of the revival, 33 years later,

Ben Brantley said the show

"suddenly feels more incisive and urgent, even necessary, than ever.

 It’s impossible not to fall in love."