Has any artist ever encapsulated both the exhilaration and the loneliness of creation as succinctly and sublimely as Stephen Sondheim did in “Finishing the Hat,” from his and James Lapine’s problematic 1985 masterpiece “Sunday in the Park With George”? Here’s Georges Seurat as he defends, exults in, and very possibly regrets an obsession with his painting that has driven away his model and lover:

Mapping out a sky,
What you feel like, planning a sky,
What you feel when voices that come
Through the window
Go
Until they distance and die,
Until there’s nothing but sky

In this visually rapturous revival, fresh from acclaimed British runs at the Menier Chocolate Factory and the West End, director Sam Buntrock has mapped out his very own sky with a wizardly sense of stagecraft and an emotional rigor that belies his age of 32. Mr. Buntrock has reimagined the creation of Seurat’s pointillist “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” flooding David Farley’s spare set with computer graphics and more conventional animation — and the effect, even to the seen-it-all audiences of the 21st century, is almost as ravishing as the painting itself.

Mitigated only somewhat by merely adequate lead performances from Daniel Evans and Jenna Russell, both of whom have accompanied the production from London, this revival locates the rigid architecture as well as the emotional underpinnings of this strange and compelling musical. When the artist urges his mother to “watch while I revise the world,” the command has rarely been more accurate. Or more unnecessary: Anyone with a vested interest in seeing how modern technology can augment or even transcend traditional stagings will find it difficult to look anywhere else. The first act, longer and considerably more engaging, chronicles the efforts of the 26-year-old Seurat (Mr. Evans) to create “La Grande Jatte,” a sprawling (more than 72 square feet), perspective-shattering array of soldiers, boatmen, shopgirls, servants, and other Sunday strollers on the picturesque Parisian island. A maniacally focused Georges contends with grumpy models, nay-saying fellow artists, and the emotional demands of the aptly named Dot (Ms. Russell), who adores him but struggles to engage with him on any meaningful emotional level. Her failure — and Georges’s triumph — culminates in the climactic re-creation of the painting, right down to the misaligned shadows and sniffing mutt.

The fine-voiced supporting cast plays a large role in creating this tableau (Mary Beth Peil and Michael Cumpsty are wonderful as Georges’s mother and friendly rival, respectively), but the marvel of this “Sunday” comes in Mr. Buntrock’s stunning animations. A set of onstage curtains miraculously morphs into trees, shadows shift and lengthen as Georges’s sessions drag on, and the black-and-white sketches take on added color and depth in almost imperceptible gradations. Yet except for a few brief and entirely appropriate sight gags, Mr. Buntrock never allows these masterful images to overshadow the plot or music. It is a joy to experience.

Seurat used only 12 colors — never black — on “La Grande Jatte,” assuming correctly that the eye would commingle the dots abutting one another. (He called the style not pointillism but divisionism.) And as even the most rudimentary piano lesson points out, Western music is predicated on just 12 notes.

Mr. Sondheim’s sumptuous score, therefore, frequently replicates the painter’s style by employing a piercing, arpeggiated sound. This occurs both in the underscoring and, through a dazzling example of subtext surging to the surface, as Georges stabs at the canvas while articulating an individual dot of color with every stuttered syllable.

But Mr. Sondheim — who had previously composed an entire score in variations of 3/4 time (“A Little Night Music”) and refracted his melodic sense through traditional Japanese harmonies and instrumentations (“Pacific Overtures”) — doesn’t force the issue. “Sunday” is filled with spare but haunting chords, providing a limpid harmonic ballast for a group of songs that come closer to art songs than those in any other Sondheim musical. (Jason Carr’s orchestrations prove remarkably successful at maintaining that sound for just five instruments, even in the acoustically punishing Studio 54.)

The stand-alone quality of many of these songs stems in part from a certain flimsiness in terms of plotting. Messrs. Sondheim and Lapine originally envisioned “Sunday” as an extended one-act; a modern-day second act wasn’t added until the last three performances of its original off-Broadway run, and it was very much a work in progress during Broadway previews. The graft is not a seamless one: Through a whirlwind of emotional epiphanies, Georges’s great-grandson, a conceptual artist named George (Mr. Evans again), reconnects with the artistic impulse through the nudgings of Dot’s daughter, Marie (Ms. Russell), now a feisty 98-year-old, and a time-hopping visit from Dot herself back on La Grande Jatte.

The production’s provenance adds a dynamic crucial to so many British productions: class. Dot’s pungent Cockney accent heightens the disparity between her and her well-to-do lover. (Seurat never sold a painting during his brief lifetime — and apparently didn’t need to.) When she gets pregnant, it quickly becomes clear that her future Sundays in the park will not be spent with Georges.

Sadly, the emotional punch that should pulse through duets such as “We Do Not Belong Together” remains muffled here. The tumultuous response that greeted their London performances notwithstanding, Ms. Russell and especially Mr. Evans have yet to create characterizations strong enough to overcome the skeletal second act, let alone counteract Mr. Buntrock’s captivating visuals.

Ms. Russell has a melting soprano, a formidable chest voice (eerily similar to that of Bernadette Peters, the original Dot) and, whether she’s wearily examining a trace of upper-arm flab in the mirror or staring incredulously at a man who can’t look at his own daughter, a touching reserve as Dot. But she falls back on a few calculated (and admittedly enjoyable) comic bits as the spunky Marie and seems misdirected during Dot’s final appearance. And the infectious spark crucial to making Seurat’s obsession even remotely sympathetic remains out of Mr. Evans’s reach, a problem that he attempts to remedy with an unconvincingly glib George in Act II. Mr. Lapine’s spare concluding words dovetail beautifully with a gorgeous final image of Mr. Buntrock’s creation. The word “breathtaking” comes to mind — but perhaps this is because Mr. Evans’s George, upon seeing it, audibly takes a delighted breath. This cloying moment represents a rare misstep for Mr. Buntrock, who has created a production that will be remembered long after any casting quibbles have faded away. He has mapped out not only a sky but the sad, splintered, and improbably hopeful world underneath it — and “Sunday” is richer for it.

Until June 1 (254 W. 54th St., between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, 212-719-1300).