Sunday in the Park with Rats
Pixar's Ratatouille isn't a Sondheim musical. Actually, it kind of is
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Shalom, Broadway lovers!
In today’s special Sondheim-focused issue of MARQUEE: The Broadway Maven’s Weekly Blast: A) an extended essay arguing that Disney/Pixar’s Ratatouille shares a soul with the Sondheim world; B) a YouTube GEM about Merrily We Roll Along; C) a Broadway Blast about A Little Night Music and Pippin; D) a survey about future actors playing Pseudolus from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum; E) an exciting update on St. Louis’s Muny outdoor theater; and F) a Last Blast about Into the Woods.
ESSAY: Good artists forge ahead. Great artists step back.
In Pixar's Ratatouille, rodent chef Remy insists the best cooking must come from a mélange of disparate ingredients that yield something altogether new. Likewise, in Sunday in the Park with George, Sondheim and Lapine's painter creates artwork from tiny flecks of pure colors that combine into vivid images that sing. Both Remy's meals and George's paintings require a step back to take in the artistic greatness of their creators.
But savor this: on a “meta” level, the same holds true with the two Parisian properties. Look at them side by side, and you’ll see: George and Remy don’t just create—they obsess, isolate, innovate. And they do it for the same reasons.
The deeper connection isn’t just that George and Remy are obsessive artists. It’s that Ratatouille and Sunday in the Park with George reflect the same artistic worldview. Both works imagine true creation as an act that dissolves the boundaries between the senses—what psychologists call synesthesia, where color might feel like sound, or flavor might evoke emotion.
In Ratatouille, Chef Gusteau describes good food as "music you can taste, color you can smell"—a line that wouldn’t feel out of place in Lapine’s book for Sunday in the Park with George. In fact, Remy's description of his own art sounds like, well, culinary pointillism: "Each flavor was totally unique. But combine one flavor with another, and something new was created."
But—dizzy yet?—if we take one further step back, we might see something even more intriguing: Ratatouille doesn't just echo Sunday in the Park with George's exploration of the artistic process. It’s a kind of stealth Sondheim musical—one that shares his preoccupations with craft, complexity, and the cost of creation across the Master's entire canon.
(And yes, I’m aware that in 2020, the Internet produced a crowdsourced Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical. Delightful as that was, this essay isn’t about that.)
So if Ratatouille is a stealth Sondheim musical, what’s playing beneath the surface? Here are three of the composer’s signature motifs, re-orchestrated in flavors, not notes.
Ambiguity: If there’s one motif that defines Sondheim’s artistic worldview, it’s ambiguity—not confusion, but contradiction lived in full. His characters love and fear, choose and regret, reach and recoil—all at once. In Sunday in the Park with George, ambiguity is the emotional climate. Dot leaves not because she stops loving George, but because he cannot give her both presence and vision. “I chose,” she says, “and my world was shaken.” The point isn’t whether she made the right decision—it’s that there was no clean one to make. In Company, “Sorry-Grateful” lays out this truth without blinking: “You’re always sorry, you’re always grateful. You’re always wondering what might have been.” The ambivalence is the experience. Into the Woods teems with similar contradictions: Little Red learns caution but also loses innocence, singing, “Isn’t it nice to know a lot? / And a little bit... not.” Jack slays the giant but mourns his mother. The Baker’s Wife kisses a prince and then dies. Every act of growth is shadowed by grief. Ratatouille understands this. Remy is never simply right or wrong, noble or selfish. He disobeys, deceives, creates, and compromises—all at once. His world is not a clean arc but a constant negotiation. The film doesn’t punish him or exalt him—it just lets him keep going. Like Sondheim’s most enduring characters, Remy isn’t asked to resolve his contradictions. He lives inside them.
The Cost of Creation: If there’s one truth that haunts Sondheim’s artists, it’s that making something beautiful often means breaking something else. Creation doesn’t heal—it demands. In Sunday in the Park with George, George finishes his painting but loses Dot in the process. His work is praised for its balance and harmony, but offstage his life is neither. Art requires solitude. “I am not hiding behind my canvas,” he insists—but it’s not clear whom he’s trying to convince. In Merrily We Roll Along, Franklin Shepard walks away from a life of collaboration and idealism in exchange for power and respectability. But as the show unspools in reverse, we watch the cost accumulate: friendship, love, joy, purpose. What he creates is slick and lucrative. What he loses is everything else. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street explores the cost even more grimly: Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett use their creativity—cutting hair and baking pies—for dark purposes. Their business thrives, but on the back of emotional devastation. Their “success” is precise, obsessive, and unspeakably costly. Ratatouille holds this same tension. Remy isn’t content to cook—he wants to create, to astonish. And to do that, he has to lie, steal, and stand apart from everyone who knows him. His artistic ambition costs him not just comfort, but credibility. When he’s caught feeding his colony, Linguini fires him. When his father sees him cooking, he’s horrified. The film doesn’t punish Remy for wanting greatness—but it makes sure he earns it. Like Franklin, Sweeney, and George, Remy learns that to bring something new into the world, something else has to be lost. Sometimes it’s comfort. Sometimes it’s companionship. Sometimes it’s yourself.
Legacy: Sondheim’s characters rarely inherit something whole, and they rarely pass on exactly what they intended. Legacy, in his work, is messy—refracted through time, altered by others, and often only half-understood. In Sunday in the Park with George, George’s painting survives, but its meaning has faded—reduced to a placard in a gallery, more admired than understood. A century later, his great-grandson presents the Chromolume with polished professionalism, but little connection to its emotional or artistic origin. However, Dot’s grammar book—passed down to Marie, and then to the younger George—carries something more intimate: her voice, her values, her effort to preserve something of herself and the artist she loved. What lasts isn’t just the art. It’s the gesture. Pacific Overtures offers a wider lens: the legacy of a nation, reshaped by outside forces. Japan’s cultural identity is fragmented, exported, reinterpreted. Traditions become images; meaning becomes performance. “Someone in a Tree” reminds us that no version of history is complete—but fragments, together, may point to something real. Follies turns legacy inward. Its characters wander through a crumbling theater, confronting who they were and what they’ve become. Their triumphs are gone, their illusions broken—but they’re still here. That, too, is a kind of legacy. Ratatouille embraces all of this. Gusteau’s face endures, but the spirit behind it has been lost. “Anyone can cook” survives only as a marketing hook—until Remy gives it substance again. What he carries forward isn’t Gusteau’s reputation—it’s his conviction: that art can come from anywhere, and matter to anyone.
Remy and George are two sides of the same centime. Obsessive, visionary outsiders. Builders of impossible beauty. Creators who lose something to leave something behind.
Loneliness. Loveliness. Legacy. Or to put it another way:
Look, I made a rat. Where there never was a rat.
YouTube GEM: Drawn from last Tuesday’s Sondheim Academy lecture on Merrily We Roll Along, here are 10 innovative and incisive observations about that excellent Sondheim-Furth show. Broadway Maven Members have two more chances to attend Sondheim Academy, once on Sunday in the Park with George (May 20) and once on pastiche (May 27). Faculty include Broadway Maven David Benkof, Sondheim expert Gail Leondar-Wright, and Juilliard Prof. Edward Barnes.
BROADWAY BLAST: When Charlemagne asks Pippin how school is going in Padua but doesn’t listen in Pippin, and Fredrik Egerman inquires similarly about Henrik’s studies yet tunes out his reply in A Little Night Music, the two scenes—remarkably similar, from musicals competing head-to-head at the 1973 Tonys—dramatize a painful truth: Onstage, fathers pretend curiosity without genuine comprehension. Premiering amid the generational turmoil of the early 1970s, as the Vietnam War divided families and the spirit of the Sixties echoed through American households, these moments in Pippin and A Little Night Music suggest how personal disconnect mirrors a wider cultural deafness.
MUNY UPDATE: Last August, a MARQUEE cover story proposed that St. Louis's Muny might be the greatest theater in America — not just for its Broadway-quality productions, but for its civic mission, offering tens of thousands of free tickets every summer. The piece argued that the nation’s oldest and largest outdoor theater was overdue for the Regional Theatre Tony Award. Well, this week, the Tonys announced that The Muny will receive the 2025 Regional Theatre Tony. The beloved St. Louis institution, which has staged several summer musicals annually since 1919, is finally getting its national due. My family has been attending for over a century, and I’m delighted to report that a well-placed source tells me MARQUEE helped influence the Tony committee's decision. That’s a standing ovation I’m proud to share.
PITCH DAY: Later this year, The Broadway Maven will be hosting a “pitch day” where MARQUEE subscribers will be able to present their show ideas to a panel of experts for feedback. I’m planning to have at least one Tony winner on the panel. Presentations could be anything between a rough idea for a show to a completed plot with a prepared song. So far, one MARQUEE subscriber, the co-creator of a 15-minute musical about Egyptian cats, has signed up. We have room for about 3-4 more presenters. If you are interested in participating in the pitch day (which is not yet scheduled) please contact David at DavidBenkof@gmail.com.
Note: A full calendar of upcoming classes is always available at TheBroadwayMaven.com.
• Monday, May 19 Noon and 7 pm ET The Broadway Institute (1980s and 1990s) (Members only)
• Tuesday, May 20 Noon ET Sondheim Academy: Sunday in the Park with George (Members only)
• Monday, May 26 Noon and 7 pm ET The Broadway Institute (21st century) (Members only)
• Tuesday, May 27 Noon ET Sondheim Academy: Pastiche in Sondheim (Members only)
• Monday, June 2 - Tuesday June 3 NO CLASS — SHAVUOT (Jewish festival)
• Sunday, June 8 Tonys Watch Party (Members only) including an in-person gathering in St. Louis (Membership not required)
• Monday, June 9 Noon and 7 pm ET The Broadway Institute (Sondheim) (Members only)
• Tuesday, June 10 Noon and 7 pm ET Les Misérables part one (FREE, registration opens soon)
LAST BLAST: In Into the Woods, when Little Red’s grandmother asks, “What kind of hunter are you?” the Baker replies, “I’m a baker,” as if the roles are mutually exclusive. But careful listeners will remember: the Baker’s father was both. After all, the magic beans were found in his "hunting jacket." And here's the irony: the man who was meant to be a baker became a hunter, abandoning his family. And the son, who tries to stay rooted in the domestic—who bakes, who clings to order—finds himself pushed into the woods, questing, chasing, confronting wolves and giants. The sentence—“I’m a baker”—isn’t just a statement. It’s a defense. His father walked out on the family in search of something wild. The Baker, in contrast, has built a life around staying put, keeping shop, making bread. But in Sondheim’s world, staying put isn’t an option. To build a home, he has to leave it. To become a father, he must become a seeker. And so the man who most fears the woods ends up retracing his father's path—hunting not for escape, but for meaning.
The Broadway Maven is a vibrant educational community that helps its members think more deeply about musical theater. Every month, members may attend 5-15 expert-led classes and innovative Broadway experiences, all for just $18. We also foster enthusiasm for Broadway through the FREE weekly Substack newsletter MARQUEE and host an expansive YouTube channel. It's your home for Broadway appreciation. Contact The Broadway Maven at DavidBenkof@gmail.com.
Wonderful essay!
I love this!