After Merrily We Roll Along's devastating flop in 1981, Stephen Sondheim thought about abandoning the theater. He wrote one of his most beloved shows instead, Sunday in the Park with George. Sondheim and his new collaborator, librettist/director James Lapine, used George Seurat's painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" as a way to tackle the issue of artistic creation itself. Both Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters play two different parts with brio, jumping across decades with ease, and they get to deliver some of Sondheim's most heartwrenching songs--"Color and Light," "Finishing the Hat," "Putting It Together," and "Children and Art." Sunday in the Park with George is one of the most intellectually ambitious musicals to ever hit Broadway--and one of the most emotionally rewarding. --Elisabeth Vincentelli