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"Sunday in the Park with George" marked a new turning point in Sondheim's career as a composer of musicals. After the commercial failure of "Merrily We Roll Along" in 1981 he seriously considered giving up composing for good. Thankfully, however, he was persuaded to collaborate with James Lapine on a new workshop production which eventually became "Sunday ...".
The play itself is a challenging and extremely emotive exploration of art and artists, as told through the story of the renowned inventor of pointillism, Georges Seurat. In Act 1, we are immersed in Georges' creative world as his most famous painting, 'A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte', is pieced together right before our eyes, from the people that Georges meets - and sketches - in the park. We empathise with Georges and his lover, Dot, as he struggles to divide his obsessive attention between his art and his love life.
The development process of this musical has set the pattern for Sondheim's musicals ever since the 80's, and we get to see a little insight into that development process in this book. The musical was 'workshopped', with songs, scenes and characters slowly added and built on as the musical was performed nightly in front of audiences. In addition to the main text of the libretto, this book includes a catalogue of the changes made between the productions up until its opening on Broadway in 1984, as well as the lyrics from some of the cut numbers, complete with commentary by Stephen Sondheim.
On a further note, we also get to see elements of the libretto that don't quite work. The initial concept of the play was to do "a theme with variations", and on that note, the 2nd Act is intended as a "variation" on the theme of art and artists - the variation being that the action is brought forward to the present day, with a contemporary George, great-grandson to Seurat. This 2nd Act was only added for two nights of the original workshop run and had to be heavily revised for the Broadway run, and it's interesting for the reader to ask themselves if this 2nd Act really works or not, and why?
One last bonus: in this edition of the libretto, George has a lengthy freestyle, train-of-thought speech at the beginning of Act 2. This has been cut from the canonical production and, as far as I am aware, is not reproduced anywhere else but here. Even though one can see it would be hard for an audience to sit through, it is a nice addition for the completist and an interesting character sketch for George.
In summary, this book is, admittedly, for people with a rather specific taste - namely an interest in Sondheim and / or the libretti of musicals. If you do have those tastes, however, there is plenty of fascinating material in this book that make it well worth buying.
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