Sunday in the Park with George (1984 Original Broadway Cast)
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Free Music Notes for Sunday in the Park with George (1984 Original Broadway Cast)
Free Music Review: Wildly self-aggrandizing
Hit: 3 Stars
The central thesis of Stephen Sondheim's SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE is that artists have a high and lonely destiny they must obey, and even if this causes them to run roughshod over those around them they're still completely justified because in the end they produce Great Art. You can easily see why this incredibly simplistic and self-justifying theme has made this show perhaps the favorite of Sondheim's shows among actors and other artistic types who think he can do no wrong. For the rest of us who find such Ayn Randesque nonsense utter claptrap, however, it's all a bit hard to take, and things are worsened considerably in this original Broadway recording by having Mandy Patinkin, that most excruciatingly insufferable and pompous of all musical singers, give voice to Sondheim and James Lapine's worst ideas. All the same, however, this recording does have its great compensatory delights: one of Bernadette Peters's best performances as Georges Seurat's mistress Dot; a superb and very funny supporting cast; and an absolutely splendid score. Some of the songs are among Sondheim's most beautiful and moving, including "Putting it Together," "We Do Not Belong Together," and the magnificent act-one closing number "Sunday."
Free Music Review: Sheer brilliance
Hit: 5 Stars
if you want to be in awe of a sheer genius and feel enlightened, then i highly reccommend the purchase of this CD. however, if you want to go one step further, than by the video. it only further enriches this entire musical experience (and the performances are wonderful)Free Music Review: Brilliance...but with some caution.
Hit: 5 Stars
This is really a great CD. I recommend it for any Sondheim fan who's really had a lot of exposure to his other shows or who's ready to give this a good hard try. However, I don't reccomend this to just any casual theatre listener if you're not willing to warm up to it.It's just this...some of this music is realy suited to the story, which is not easy to figure out from just listening to the music, and unless you listen to the score for a while and get a sense of characters and plot by reading the synopsis in the booklet, most people would just toss this aside.
However hard to warm up to, this is really a great score, full of rich music sung by awesome actors. Mandy Patinkin and especially the beautiful and wonderfully charming yet inquisitive Bernadette Peters are both greatly suited to their roles.
What I wonder most about this score is why the second act is so short and underdeveloped...It's full of great stuff, but it seems like it doesn't dig deep enough under the piece's skin. The new George is introduced, and his ties to Marie when she reappears to him are not fully explained.
Great songs, to me are: "Finishing the Hat," "We Do Not Belong Together," and "Move On." However, some songs that you can skip over until you're ready for them are: "No Life" sung by the droll and boring Jules and Yvonne and "The Day Off" which is George's somewhat evil song where he yaps like a dog for most of the song...boring.
Great CD...especially for Sondheads, but be ready to give this a good hard try first. I highly recommend the video, even if you're still a bit leery of the CD. It's really good stuff.
Free Music Review: A masterpiece
Hit: 5 Stars
Quite simply, there are not too many musicals that can find themselves in the same company, no pun intended, with Sunday In The Park With George. Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim alone should be enough to convince anyone to buy this, but you have Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters singing his glorious words, accompanied by his moving and melodic orchestration. You can possibly go wrong.The story is magical. Things appear behind George as he paints or conceptualizes the idea. Objects are removed if he erases them. The characters in the painting speak. Ghosts appear, Sondheim has characters named Dot and a dog named Spot as an allegory to Seurat's pointilistic style of painting.
1. Sunday In The Park With George is a great opening. I love Mandy's intro and the
2. No Life is painful and sorrowful, but the people singing this have no idea what George has left up his sleeve.
3. Color And Light is a great song that peers into George's psyche, speaking to a womna who's parasol is so perfectly cocked and a man who's silk hat is so black to you but so red to me.
4. Gossip is mean and viscious, but George is a bit reclusive, and living in his painting, so yes, rumours will spread.
5. The Day Off is funny when Mandy becomes two different dogs and speaks back and forth as both of them.
6. Everybody Loves Louis is when Dot reveals she is with Louis the baker, an artist?
7. Finishing The Hat is George back to work, finishing the hat he sings about in Color and Light.
8. We Do Not Belong Together is the song when Dot and George are through. She has his baby, but she takes off for America with Louis, the baker artist?
9. Beautiful is when the old lady that George paints sings to him, telling him to capture everything he sees as beautiful around him.
10. Sunday is the most gorgeous on here. This is when George finishes his masterpiece and man oh man, the harmony will not you on your ass.
11. It's Hot Up Here is when the painting sings, being hot and stuffy, hanging on wall for 100 years now.
12. Chromolume #7/Putting It Together is probably Sondheim's most famous song. I love how George puts out cardboard cutouts of himself that people tal to as him. And, the pain in this song is so beautifully written and sung.
13. Children And Art is touching and reminiscent. Marie sings to George about her mother and what she remembers and tries to inspire George and connect him to his past through the painting.
14. Lesson #8, George has returned to the scene of where his great grandfather's painting is set. It has changed. But George flips through Dot's grammar book and relives the old days, trying to understand more.
15. Move On is a magical song when the ghost of Dot appears and she thinks George holding her red grammar book is her George. It is inspirational.
16. Sunday is the finale, where the painting materializes in front of Dot and young George and young George and Dot become a part of the harmony and young George who suffers much in the same way that old George did, his demons are exorcised and he reads out his great gradnfathers words, and it is by now that I begin to cry.
Oh, how I would love to see a revival of this show. It is glorious and magical and grand and sweeping and harmonic and melodious. Stephen Sondheim and Sunday In The Park With George get my highest recommendation.
Free Music Review: One of the best explorations of the creation of art, period.
Hit: 5 Stars
No broadway composer is as ambitious as Steven Sondheim. His musicals deal with everything from marriage (Company), imperialism (Pacific Overtures) and the American Dream (Assassins). Along with his operatic Sweeney Todd, this may be his best work. This story is about two artists (George Seurat and his great-grandson, both played by Mandy Patinkin) and how art is created. "Art isn't easy" is the recurring idea. Now, that isn't at all simple or mundane as explored by Sondheim and Lapine. This is a show that is more than the sum of it's parts. From the pointilist arpeggios timed to the dabbing paint brash, to the dynamic lyrics which amuse by imitating a dog, or proclaiming the highest aims in love and art, Sondheim ventures into terra incognita for his musical. The first act is the creation of the painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" and the separation of George from his mistress (Dot), as well as a model in the painting. The second act concerns George's great grandson, who's exploring a new way of art (using a different form of color and light: the laser beam). He has no idea what he wants to do next, and his helped by the example set by his ancestor.
It's incredibly difficult to choose a favourite song from this beautiful musical. "Color and Light", "Finishing the Hat", and "Putting it Together" all explore the creation of art beautifully. "We Do Not Belong Together" and "Move On" are heartwrenching, but it's the act finales entitled "Sunday" that work the best. As the voices soar, you see this painting in your mind's eye. It's a stunning effect, and a powerhouse.
Sondheim has been accused before of making music without passion, just wit and intelligence. Never is that accusation more wrong than here. This is one of the greatest musicals, period. And one of the best explorations of the creative process in any medium.