The central character in Sunday in the Park with George is based on the painter Georges Seurat.
The musical explores Seurat’s creation of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, one of the best-known works associated with Pointillism. The first act imagines Seurat at work in 19th-century Paris, while the second act shifts to a fictional modern descendant who is also an artist.
Stephen Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics, and James Lapine wrote the book. The show opened on Broadway in 1984 after its initial production at Playwrights Horizons. Mandy Patinkin originated the role of George, while Bernadette Peters played Dot in the original Broadway cast.
The musical is not a straightforward biography. It invents dialogue, relationships, and later generations to consider artistic discipline, intimacy, and the cost of creative focus. Seurat was a French painter born in 1859 who developed a method using small distinct marks of color, a technique later associated with Neo-Impressionism.