As this production of Sondheim’s musical started life at the tiny Menier Chocolate Factory, the question was whether it would lose some of its charm in transferring to the bigger West End stage. Not a bit of it. The production seems to rejoice in having more space to play with, but loses none of its intimacy and precision.

Above all, the technical wizardry has room to breathe. Sam Buntrock’s brilliantly intelligent production makes dazzling use of animation and projection to bring to life Georges Seurat’s painting “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”. David Farley’s set is a white-walled room that can pass for studio or gallery, but which can also work as a set of screens, allowing the painting to grow and change as George works on it, and to surround him and the characters he paints. It’s very clever and delightfully playful: boats scud out across the water; figures walk on to the grass and then disappear as George rubs them out; two dogs come to life as he sketches them.

But it is not just gimmicky. The animations (designed by Timothy Bird) give us the feeling we are peering into the artist’s mind and watching the creative process. And just as Seurat’s innovative technique allows us to see two colours but mix them in the eye, the production enables us to see the

“real” people and his representations simultaneously, to appreciate the gap between their messy, emotional lives and his orderly, calm recreations of them.

This makes the moment when they finally assume the positions frozen forever on canvas strangely moving. The technique also helps with the tricky second act, which follows George’s great-grandson, a conceptual artist, as he likewise struggles to find his way.

All this would be arid, though, without the music – delicately rescored and richly delivered – and the performances. Daniel Evans is excellent as George. Although prickly, taciturn and driven, Evans also makes him sympathetic and gives him a fierce integrity. So we understand what Dot, his lover and model (a lovely, feisty performance from Jenna Russell), sees in him – but also why she leaves. “Art isn’t easy,” sings the chorus, but this team manages to practise it with deceptive ease. ★★★★★

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