Lawson Taitte

NEW YORK – The set would be the star of the Broadway revival of Sunday in the Park With George – if the actors weren't so sensational.

JOAN MARCUS/Boneau-Bryan Brown

Jenna Russell and Daniel Evans revive their roles from the London production. Mr. Evans creates two completely individualized portraits from two centuries.

Roundabout Theatre Company has imported the Olivier Award-winning production from London's Menier Chocolate Factory. The 1984 American original won Stephen Sondheim and his librettist, James Lapine, a Pulitzer Prize along with the usual laurels for a musical. You don't tackle this ambitious piece unless you mean business – and director Sam Buntrock means business and knows his business.

Sunday in the Park meditates on what it is to be an artist and what it takes to make art. In the first act, we see Georges Seurat's great painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte gradually take shape – as the artist pushes his lover and muse, Dot, away. The second moves us 100 years forward into the 1980s, where Seurat's great-grandson is turning out sculptures under the very different conditions of publicity, commissions, grants and so on.

Set and costume designer David Farley and projections designer Timothy Bird depict Seurat's artistic process on the walls of the set. The technology – not to mention the artistry – is breathtaking. This constitutes a genuine theatrical breakthrough.

What really brings the production, reviewed Wednesday, alive, though, are the two lead performers, the only actors who came over from London. Daniel Evans creates two completely individualized portraits of the 19th- and 20th-century Georges. Seurat is as formal and reserved, though passionate underneath, as his painting style, while the younger George is a tightly wound but energetic American. In both roles, Mr. Evans sings with astonishing power.

Jenna Russell sometimes overdoes Dot's lower-class coarseness, but in the more emotional scenes she's both valiant and vulnerable. Among the Americans in the cast, cabaret great Jessica Molaskey shows off her acting chops as the wife of another painter, and Dallas favorite Ed Dixon plays two rather obnoxious Southerners – charmingly, of course.

In a normal year, this would be a shoo-in for the best-musical-revival Tony Award, but that promises to be this season's hottest category. It will be interesting to see if it can compete with the homegrown versions of Gypsy and South Pacific.

Plan your life

Sunday in the Park With George continues through June 26 at Studio 54, 254 W. 54th St., New York. Runs 165 mins. $36.25 to $121.25. 212-719-1300, www.roundabouttheatre.org.