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The National theatre's production of Stephen Sondheim's Pulitzer prize-winning musical Sunday in the Park with George, is essential viewing for anyone labouring under the misapprehension that modern musicals start and end with Lloyd Webber.
It is Sondheim at his best- a triumph for composer, designer, directors and players.
Of all characters to have taken centre stage in a musical, the show's pivotal figure, painter Georges Seurat - a private man who devoted his life to his art, had a mistress few people met, lived with his mother and died at 32 - surely ranks among the least likely.
But in Sondheim's hands the real and imagined intertwine to create a score that shimmers with the same flecks of light and dark as Seurat's pointilliste paintings.
Philip Quast gives a strong performance, but ultimately fails to shatter Seurat's imposing image, while Maria Friedman, doubling as the artist's mistress and daughter, combines a powerful voice with accessible wit.
© The Express
