Sunday in the Park with Sondheim, Lapine, Seurat, and Babbitt

The chapter offers a highly detailed analysis of Sunday in the Park with George and reveals the intricate connections that exist at seemingly every level between the first and second acts in this musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. The chapter examines the origins of these large-scale similarities and unpacks their significances as expressions and extensions of Georges Seurat’s painting, Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jatte (A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte). It also identifies parallels between Seurat’s techniques and theories, particularly chromoluminarism, and a variety of aspects of the script and score, and it traces Sondheim’s penchant for creating intricate designs, in part, to his compositional studies with Milton Babbitt.