Painting With Music Entertainment Weekly, April 30, 1999 The colors are dull, the sound is pinched. Is this any way to experience Sunday in the Park With George (Image, unrated, $19.98 on tape, $29.99 on DVD), Stephen Sondheim's Pulitzer-winning 1984 Broadway show? Absolutely. Taped in 1985 for PBS, this reissued homescreen production struggles to get camera angles right while Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters play out love-hate duets as pointillist painter Georges Seurat and fictional mistress Dot. But the show's portrait of an artist succeeding at work while failing in life survives the clumsy visuals, and it's great fun to see Brent Spiner (Star Trek's Data) and Charles Kimbrough (Murphy Brown) in pre-TV star parts. On DVD and laser, there's audio commentary with Peters, Patinkin, Sondheim and director-book writer James Lapine. The patter satisfies, even though hambone Patinkin hogs the microphone. A- "As for Patinkin and Peters, they have the best voices in the business, and this 1984 recording captures them in their prime. Patinkin gamely commits to all of George's eccentricities, feverishly dabbing at his canvas in one scene, and in the next imagining a duet between dogs in the park. His presence is solid, his voice is rich, and the complexity of his performance proves him the master performer he is. " --DVD Journal "Dot's passion is George, but George's passion is art. His obsession is both inspiring and frightening. And giving that intensity it's full measure on the stage is a sterling Mandy Patinkin. The first time I saw Sunday, my only knowledge of Patinkin was his performance as Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride. Now, sure, his drunken, vengeful Spaniard was excellently done, but I couldn't imagine him singing in a dramatic role. I can imagine it now. Wow, what an amazing voice Patinkin has! And, as Seurat, he burns with the fire which drives the painter to lock himself away from the world in his need to stand behind his canvas. His voice soars and grumbles and soars again, and his mannerisms as the eccentric artist are very convincing. His passion becomes real for viewers through songs like the poignant "Finishing the Hat" and a series of humorous vignettes in which he briefly assumes the identities of his subjects, from boatman to hound. ...Patinkin and Peters both have some incredibly powerful solos, as each explores their markedly different approach to life. Seurat's love for Dot, we learn, runs deep and is very real, but he cannot sacrifice his art for her. And she realizes she needs more in her life, even though it tears her apart to leave him." --Rambles, A Cultural Arts Magazine "It just seemed the perfect thing to do. It was a workshop. I'd always wanted to be in a Sondheim show and here was an opportunity just coming to me. It was a period piece, which seemed great. When I read the treatment I thought, 'Oh Mandy Patinkin would be great for this.' I didn't know him at the time but I asked James [Lapine] who was doing the other part and he said Mandy Patinkin. And I said, 'That's so funny. That's who I thought of when I read this.' It just seemed so perfect to go off and do. And since it's a workshop you're not committed to it unless you want to be when they go to Broadway. " --sondheim.com interview with Bernadette Peters "Seurat, here embodied commandingly by Mandy Patinkin, could well be a stand-in for Mr. Sondheim, who brings the same fierce, methodical intellectual precision to musical and verbal composition that the artist brought to his pictorial realm. ...Mr. Patinkin is a crucible of intellectual fire - ''he burns you with his eyes,'' says Dot, with reason - and the wonderful Miss Peters overflows with all the warmth and humor that George will never know." --New York Times Sunday in the Park With George Information at Stephen Sondheim Stage Films in Review magazine Bernadette Peters Inteview (discussing SITPWG) Click for photos

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