When I reviewed Passion’s original Broadway production—in my pre-Aisle
Say days—I wrote a review that I’ll
start with here. I’ve cut it down, thrown it into italics and swapped in the
names of the revival cast for easy reference, since the specific text I’m
duplicating is about the material itself, not the production—and since I
hold to my original assessment—but I’ll get to both productions once the
italics finish and I “return you to the present.”
I don’t think there’s an easy
or wholly accurate review of Passion
to be written.
You
could take a consumers’ advocate stance and say that its composer‑lyricist Stephen Sondheim—this time in his third collaboration with
librettist‑director
James Lapine—strays further
afield from standard Broadway musical expectations than even he has gone
before. And could thus counsel that anyone desiring an easily accessible,
comforting musical theatre vocabulary, dance, flash and glitter, will get none
of those things and should stay away.
You
could take the high artistic road and praise the show for its daring and
adventurousness,
for its dogged insistence on pushing the envelope of musical theatre’s
capabilities. And could thus counsel that it is a shimmering revelation, good
for the theatre and good for the soul.
Both
positions are misleading. Passion,
though anti-establishment in its reflexes, has the capacity to seduce, and
gently educate, a traditionalist willing to meet it halfway. And while Passion embraces the extremes of its
iconoclasm, it sometimes seems to do so with such a perverse willfulness that it is
likely as not to piss off the theatre sophisticates.
Everything
about the new musical cries out for debate, starting with the subject matter.
Based on the Italian film Passione
D’Amore, directed by Ettore Scola (in turn based on a little known novel, Fosca,
by I.U. Tarchetti),
the story takes place in a remote Italian military outpost in Parma, 1863. The
outpost was once a garrison against invasions, but now the garrison is
unnecessary. This leaves soldiers with little to do but drill and mark
time—fine for Giorgio (Ryan Silverman) who travels when he can to Milan, to conduct a
tempestuous affair with the beautiful, married Clara (Melissa Errico). The affair, in time, becomes a shaky haven, a
place of escape from Fosca (Judy Kuhn), who lives at the military base with her
cousin, Colonel Ricci (Stephen Bogardus).
Fosca, an ugly, ill, self-absorbed woman, senses that there is something
different about Giorgio and quickly develops an all-consuming, obsessive love
for him. It is a love that he at first finds a threat and a burden. And then it
begins to change him in ways he doesn’t expect…doesn’t want…and eventually
accepts.
The
musical’s point of view seems to be, as James Lapine said in an interview, that
“being naked is not about taking off your clothes,” that Fosca’s story
underscores “how little intensity and passion we have in our own lives.” Maybe.
But there’s also no denying that Fosca’s obsession comes from a gray,
disturbing, highly dysfunctional place…and the notion that it is somehow ennobling to succumb to such
attentions is highly questionable.
But
if the implied message is arguable, the story is nonetheless a convincing case
history, and the authors do a good job of keeping an obvious moral stance out
of the proceedings. Perhaps that’s why “Passion” has so divided its audiences.
Having illustrated its thesis, it then resolutely refuses to tell you what to
think. It means to haunt you…and it does.
Perhaps
more than any other Sondheim score, Passion
does not instantly take root in the memory. It is lush and ravishing, but also,
on first hearing, ephemeral, song structures often eschewing the familiar
guideposts of what the ear is used to. Par for the Sondheim course, Passion’s is a score whose riches and
wonders grow and become apparent to the listener upon subsequent encounters,
which I say with the benefit of having had a few. One of the unique thrills of
a Sondheim score is the opportunity
to learn it via the album, and return to the show anew.
Lyrically,
too, Sondheim is less aggressive about using his trademark pyrotechnics. Rapier
wit and complex rhyme schemes give way here to the more dangerous economy of
baldly expressed
emotion.
Lapine’s
book is likewise both forthright and muted, And he has attempted to keep the
action going in a manner that is fluid and unrelenting—perhaps as a
metaphor for Fosca’s obsession. Musical numbers insinuate themselves into the
story and just as quietly evanesce, without “buttons” for applause. No musical
numbers are listed in the program in fact. The evening is not quite as seamless
as the authors intend…but then, the inevitable imperfections in the quest for
uncompromising excellence are part of what a Sondheim/Lapine collaboration is
about too.
What alters the experience of the
show this time around is the direction by John Doyle. His is the kind of reinvestigation that assists
the authors in further honing their intent; that in process would seem to have
said, “If you meant the show to give this message and evoke that feeling, we need to answer certain questions, more
sharply focus certain themes, devise blocking configurations that tacitly
help lead the audience along and generally bring them into the world so closely that their own prejudicial
filters can’t get in the way. We need to make the show more of what
it is.” This is a very significant and
profound difference from the more usual revival approach that mixes it up for a
“fresh approach” that looks different,
but whose efforts reinterpret to the point of redefining. Usually not for the
better.
In
this instance, Doyle makes the argument for Fosca an even stronger one, and the
dissolution of Giorgio’s relationship with Clara more of an inevitability,
managing to reframe the psychological dynamic such that Fosca, while as
unsettling as ever, seems less toxic; and so that Clara, as alluring as ever,
represents a heat so intense that it has to cool. This allows our sympathies to
shift more fluidly.
In
part Doyle accomplishes this with casting of the women: Donna Murphy originated
the role in 1994; and if my quick internet search is accurate, Judy Kuhn is
approximately a year older than Ms. Murphy is now in 2013. But in persona, Kuhn’s Fosca nonetheless registers as a
little younger than Murphy’s did (not to take anything away from that
magnificent, bravura performance); and in stature she’s smaller and in color
paler; her face is also plainer: there’s something of a blank slate that her
Fosca’s emotions “write upon” variously, rather than a face so extreme in its
profile, and expression of wretchedness that she demands not only to be
recognized for the purity of her love, but celebrated for the depth of her
misery (which was in a way the authors’ intentional choice in ’94; as if to
present any less stark a portrait would be to compromise). But what this
smaller, paler, gradually emerging Fosca
does is reveal herself in layers, thus giving the audience a chance to find
some light within the darkness. Ms. Errico’s Clara, likewise seeming younger
than that of Marin Mazzie, is conversely a touch more callow. Never insincere,
but seeking in Giorgio more of a retreat than a home—such that,
inevitably, when Giogio’s deeper needs wage war with his desires, her
convictions begin to erode; and just as he drifts toward Fosca, Clara drifts
away from Giogio.
One
cannot overemphasize how much the staging plays a part in this as well. The
CSC, which is here configured in its most usual three-quarter surround
arrangement, perforce brings the audience into intimate contact with whatever’s
on its stage; but Doyle has somehow drawn upon the physical dimensions to
create a storytelling box within the theatrical box that strikes me as
portable—movable to another, larger venue, to be blunt (and I think the
chances are better than fair)—in which relative closeness and distance
are reflections of the love story’s subtextual ebb and flow. I don’t mean to suggest
that this is achieved in any self-consciously symbolic way—I think it’s
quite subtle and poetic—but if you’re attuned to it—and I was, as
soon as I realized how the narrative was being rebalanced—it’s among the
most psychologically and analytically conceived stagings I’ve ever encountered.
But for all that, hardly clinical.
As
for other elements, the rest of the fine cast, design, musical direction: let’s
just say the standard of excellence and integration holds across the board.
I
don’t know if Passion will ever be a
populist musical, but Doyle has, I think, found a way to break through
reflexive walls of resistance some have to its premise—specifically to
the heroine’s deservedness of the love she so manipulatively pursues—such
that at the very least I believe it would leave even a cynic hard pressed to
deny that he found it affecting…if he was being utterly honest with you and
with himself. And for that reason the assessment I keep circling around is that
Doyle has “solved” Passion. But I
don’t land on it because it’s not quite correct.
More
the case is that he has created an environment in which Passion has been able to solve itself…
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