Is Sunday in the Park the best musical ever?

They loved it in London but the Tonys went for another juicy Jerry Herman production number, "The Best of Times," (which followed "Hello, Dolly" and "Mame." It also added a little current social commentary.

However "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" is the best painting ever.

Sunday in the Park is still a work in progress, since no one has figured out yet why there is a second act.

AND EVERYTHING WAS RAGTIME

SUNDAY is very nearly the best original musical I have ever see. What was surprising to me at the time was the number of Broadway critics who despised it. Frank Rick at the NY Times gave it a glowing and thoughtful review. Other critics either missed the point or did not have the patience to examine it. But the video of the original Broadway production is there to verify what magical production the original was. Also, guests on my radio program are asked to select and play 5 of their favorite show tunes and "Finishing the Hat" is one that is most often requested.

This is from Rich's generally positive review (keeping in mind that Rich, the "Butcher of Broadway," was the weakest of Times' modern critics (don't look for a Frank Rich Theater some day).

As is often the case in Sondheim musicals, we don't care about the characters - and here, more than ever, it's clear we're not meant to care. To Seurat, these people are just models for a meditative composition that's not intended to tell any story: In his painting, the figures are silent and expressionless, and even Dot is but fodder for dots. Mr. Lapine and Mr. Sondheim tease us with their characters' various private lives - which are rife with betrayals - only to sever those stories abruptly the moment Seurat's painting has found its final shape. It's the authors' way of saying that they, too, regard their ''characters'' only as forms to be manipulated into a theatrical composition whose content is more visual and musical than dramatic.

In so far as this paragraph is comprehensible, it makes me feel better about my lack of attraction to this musical. I learned and have always thought that the mark of success of an author was to create characters about whom people cared.

Oh my god, people, it's a freaking troll!

That Frank Rich think about not being meant to care about the characters is, Frankly, insane. He's entitled not to care but the moment when Dot leaves with their child in tow, and takes one last stab at making Seurat notice and you sense that he would like to be a person who would notice but he cannot because it's all about his art? Devastating. I care. And I'm not the only one.

OlBlueEyes said: "...
In so far as this paragraph is comprehensible, it makes me feel better about my lack of attraction to this musical. I learned and have always thought that the mark of success of an author was to create characters about whom people cared.





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I don't mean to be unkind, but apparently your theatrical education never got to Brecht, Piscator, Beckett, Artaud, Genet or even Joe Orton. There are lots of things theater can offer besides sympathetic characters.

Which is not to say SITPWG offers any of those things. The first act is highly repetitious and after awhile one is just waiting for them to make the damn painting. The second act is dominated by a painfully obnoxious planetarium show.

I saw the opening night and I've never seen an audience so bored. People snored around me until the laser show when the woman next to me shouted at the stage, "I guess this might be interesting if I were REALLY STONED!"

I don't know who said Frank Rich was a "weak" critic. He single-handedly made SUNDAY a hit and Sondheim a cultural icon. People outside NYC hardly knew who Sondheim was (and Broadway regulars were sharply divided) until Rich's series of NYT essays on the lyricist-composer.

In response to the thread title question: Not even close (though a few of the songs are lovely).

(BTW and FTR, I am a huge Sondheim fan. My first two Broadway shows were COMPANY and FOLLIES, and I even loved PASSION. But with SUNDAY, I sat through the workshop, opening night, later performances, the video, etc., and it has never improved in my eyes.)

Do you all realize that you are playing right into the original poster's game? This person could care less if anyone thinks "Sunday in the Park with George" is the best musical ever. This person created this thread on purpose, to get board members all bent out of shape and then get them to respond defensively for their own enjoyment and amusement.

How does anyone on here not know this?

Uh-huh.

After Eight said: "The elitist snobs are in all their glory this evening."

I love this show, and I'm not an elitist snob. I do recognize that other people of goodwill - and good taste - might not like it. Will you confirm that you can offer me a similar courtesy?

Updated On: 12/13/16 at 09:46 PM

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I don't mean to be unkind, but apparently your theatrical education never got to Brecht, Piscator, Beckett, Artaud, Genet or even Joe Orton. There are lots of things theater can offer besides sympathetic characters.

Please. Let us call a spade a spade. If you did not want to be unkind, then you would not have written something that you thought would be taken as unkind. There are those who take pleasure in saying unkind things.

But you are correct. My theatrical education never got to any of those gentlemen, not even Joe Orton. In fact, I could never for the life of me figure out why, in the name of theatrical education, anyone would try to impose Oedipus Rex on an unsuspecting student. But you probably dug Sophocles.

Henry James has always been one of my most favorite novelists. He writes long, verbose paragraphs full of run-on sentences. The only "action" in any of his novels is psychological, and even this can be so subtle as to be missed on first reading.

An invitation to read one of his novels can send many intelligent and well educated people running out of the room screaming. That's fine. Different Strokes.

And I'm being absolutely sincere when I say that I wish I shared the breadth of your ability to take pleasure in such a diversity of musical theater.

You enjoy very much Oklahoma and also Company. The first begins with Curley out in the fields singing the lyrical "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin." The second with a group of people chanting "Bobby, Bobby, Bobby Baby, Bobby Bubi, Robby." I just can't encompass both.