NEW YORK - Artistic commitment may not be the most likely subject for musical theatre but in "Sunday in the Park With George," its painter-hero burns with such heartfelt intensity that he and the show have to sing.

And sing they do - quite wonderfully - at Studio 54 where the Roundabout Theatre Company has opened a stunning revival of the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical.

"Sunday" is Sondheim's most personal score, an artful juggling of the cerebral and the emotional, a delicate balancing act perfectly captured here in a production that first earned cheers at a tiny London theatre in 2005.

Much has been made of director Sam Buntrock's use of technologically advanced, animated projections (by Timothy Bird) that show the bit-by-bit creation of Georges Seurat's pointillist masterpiece, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte."

Yes, these 21st-century updates dazzle and are a way to take the musical beyond the memorable 1984 original, which featured Mandy Patinkin as the painter and Bernadette Peters as Dot, the artist's muse and mistress.

The projections bring a fluidity to the revival, a brushstroke ease of movement that suggests the act of putting paint on canvas. But they would be only empty motion if the performances surrounding them were not compelling.

Fortunately, Daniel Evans and Jenna Russell are as fine as their starry predecessors in interpreting the obsessed painter and the woman who can't compete with his fierce artistic vision.

It's lonely being a true believer in one's art and having the need to fend off distractions - whether it's a lover, family or friends - while creating. There's a price for everything, and Seurat is played by Evans with a sense of knowing unease. His painter, slight in stature but brimming with energy, seems to realize what he is missing by concentrating only on his art. It makes him work even harder.

Lapine's insightful book spans nearly a century. Seurat is complemented in Act 2 by his great-grandson, also played by Evans, a modern-day artist who is discouraged by what he has to do to get his art produced.

Russell, too, portrays two characters - not only Dot, the mistress but, after intermission, Marie, the young artist's grandmother. The actress is a marvel. There is an impish, sardonic quality to her Dot, and that humour does not desert her as the elderly Marie in the mid-1980s, which is when the second act is set.

During the show's first incarnation, some critics sniped at what they considered a diffuse Act 2 of "Sunday," set in the competitive world of the contemporary art scene. Yet it's here, in Marie's touching musical sermon, "Children and Art," that the show finds its centre and heart. "It's not so much do what you like, as it is that you like what you do," she admonishes her artistically at-sea grandson.

Buntrock has surrounded his two leads with a strong supporting cast of American performers. They know how to act their roles as well as sing them. Among the standouts are Michael Cumpsty as a rival painter; the lovely Jessica Molaskey as this competitor's wife; and, particularly, Mary Beth Peil as Seurat's disapproving mother.

It's these characters (they eventually end up in the painting) who provide the tension that existed during Seurat's short life, which ended at age 31. It's a tension the painter was willing to put up with as long as it didn't distract from the goal of finishing his masterpiece.

As the late 20th-century George reiterates, "Art isn't easy." That may be true. But when the result has as much power and emotion as this Roundabout revival, it can be an absolute joy.

"Sunday in the Park With George" runs through June 1.