Stephen Sondheim was ready to quit Broadway. The failure of Merrily We Roll Along, his first real flop in nearly 20 years, left him cold toward creating more art. Until James Lapine showed him one particular painting, which became a topic of conversation and eventually led to the creation of Sunday In The Park With George. A mammoth work, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Here is the original 1984 Broadway cast of Sunday In The Park With George [2h25m].
This most-intricate of all Sondheim musicals must, of course, come with creation myths. Playbill has How Sondheim and Lapine Made a Masterpiece with Sunday in the Park With George gets into the evolution of the show as it came into being, and Living In The Canvas: The Creation Of Sunday In The Park With George. Huntington Theater’s article Living In The Canvas: The Creation Of Sunday In The Park With George gets a bit more into the technical aspects of the show. Suffice it to say, this show was different from previous Sondheim shows on a lot of levels. Perhaps freed after Merrily’s failure, he was making new discoveries.
Oh, and I have found the 1984 Broadway production subtitled in Spanish. For those who would appreciate that kind of thing.
A found oddity is this “Score-Video” of the show. It combines the musical score with the entirety of the show. It’s hard to describe, but for those who appreciate musical notation for shows, this is a very interesting format, and I recommend.
And, before we leave that original production… The DVD Commentary version of the show, with Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Stephen Sondheim, and James Lapine from 1999. For those etc etc. [It is oh so delicious.]
All these videos run the length of the original show video.
Sunday opened in London in 1990. Here’s a television special with interviews and showing the production coming together [48m] that’s pretty interesting. Insights and glimpses of a different staging of the show. [The video has occasional half-second pauses in it, annoying but still watchable.]
There was a Sunday In The Park reunion event in 1994. This is an audience video [2h20m], and it’s everything you’d expect. Fun, fun, and celebratory fun!
2013 saw a production in Paris with a full philharmonic orchestra [2h23m], which was filmed and is frequently rebroadcast in France. It’s a full production, only the second I’ve ever seen, and it’s really great. [The reworking of the score for a full orchestra is fabulous!] This has French subtitles, for those who would appreciate that.
2017 saw the second Broadway revival of Sunday, starring Jake Cyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford. The Cast Album is available as a YouTube playlist.
2021 is a remarkable year, because not only did Stars In The House do 1h21m with Peters and Lapine talking about the show, but also Lapine put out a book about the show this year. That book release led to Sunday At The Getty With James: The Making Of Sunday In The Park With George [1h16m], an interview with Lapine and Sondheim about the show [From Sept of this year, and Sondheim (at 91) seems in good health. Yay!]. Also an Author Event with Lapine [57m] is a good watch.
But really, if there is one piece of this ancillary material you must watch, it’s Poetry In America Season 2, Episode 5: Finishing The Hat [Vimeo link, 27m]. It examines the themes of the show entirely through the lens of one piece, and that one piece is probably one of Sondheim’s most personal expressions of his craft.