Passion

I'm going to go against the grain here. Now, I really love the work of Stephen Sondheim. Since my first experience with Sweeney Todd, his art has continued to surprise me. However, this play was possible his worst and I can see why it failed to find popular audience.

In my opinion, this play sent out a terrible message to the audience. From personal experience, I realize how dangerous obsessive love can be. There is nothing romantic or passionate about obsession and the behavior Fosca presents. The entire romance is just plain frightening and creepy. Fosca would have been more sympathetic if she had suffered from unrequited love alone rather than obsession.

Marin Mazzie (Clara) gives the strongest performance in this, and is the only thing I enjoyed about the play. Some of the music is nice, but definitely not Sondheim's best. The sets and costumes are rather boring as well. If you're looking from some good old Sondheim than I would suggest watching Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, West Side Story, and Sunday in the Park with George. The music, appeal, and overall production is so much greater in those plays.

This has to be Sondheim's weakest work (with the possible exception of his last work, which I have never heard). As with most of his musicals, it suffers from a poor book (in fact, I think 'Forum' may be the only musical he wrote with a good book). But usually his work is saved by the wonderful music and lyrics. In this case both are dull, unimaginative, and even repetitive. Why on earth does he always take the worst material and try to turn it into a musical? In the past, it was crap like 'Merrily, We Roll Along' and 'Sweeney Todd'. He even managed to take one of the greatest films ever made, Smiles of Summer Night, and turned it into a trite, hackneyed, predictable story. But there we can blame the book writer for not staying true to the original material. Here he takes what was originally a highly mediocre Italian film and tries to turn it into something interesting. Well, he and Lapine once again failed at that. As to the performances, well they are all equally dull and uninteresting. Donna Murphy, in fact, belies the fragility of her character by belting out songs that could knock the walls off the theater. To say this is incongruous would be redundant. Jere Shea is just plain dull, and not very attractive. The rest of the cast is just plain dull. The direction, staging, costumes, lighting, etc. are all unimaginative. Hopefully this entire piece will just disappear from Sondheim's canon.

Passion is not for everybody and it will test the patience of some. It still however has Sondheim's beautiful music and intelligent lyrics, and the story is poignant once you stick with it. And this is an incredible performance, if you love Passion(I myself think that while it's not Sondheim's best that it's misunderstood) you'll find much pleasure in the performance. The production is transferred to DVD beautifully, sharp, fluid and clear, has simple but effective sets and costumes and it's a cleverly lit production also. With the way the orchestra play Sondheim's music positively sweeps, and the tempos are all appropriate to the moods each song is conveying. The drama and what's happening on stage is genuinely poignant and once you stick with the production and the musical itself you'll be drawn in. Fosca is also very easy to identify with. And that is mainly because of the unforgettable performance of Donna Murphy, a powerful and moving performance if there ever was one, she doesn't just perform Fosca, she becomes Fosca. Marin Mazzie is superb as well, beautiful voice and compelling acting complete with personal beauty and charm. Jere Shea has a great voice and is heartfelt towards the end, but his acting is rather wooden most of the time. That's the only speck of a criticism to be had with the production though. In conclusion, patience-testing on first viewing but stick with it and once you get past Shea's acting this is an incredible performance of an underrated Sondheim. To be seen especially for Murphy, who gives the performance-of-a-lifetime, and probably has not been better than here. 9.5/10 Bethany Cox

There's a number of different reactions that I can imagine a viewer could experience whilst watching this musical. My own was that of complete surrender to an intense and beautiful, if unlikely and dramatically heightened, story. But when a story is so stylised, when it is pushed as far to an extreme as possible, I feel that it can be permitted to go anywhere and twist *anything*. There is a line in Sondheim's PASSION goes, "Love that thinks everything is pure, everything is beautiful, everything is possible...," and this is precisely what we must understand before PASSION can make sense.

The score in itself could accompany a ballet, wordless, and still be beautiful, I think (and I'm no huge fan of ballet). The lyrics are so fitting and right that they add yet another layer. I saw this filmed production about a year ago for the first time, before I listened to the album... but since then, I've become used to just listening to the 70 minute condensed version. Watching this again today reminded me just how amazing Donna Murphy is as Fosca, how stylised the whole show is visually, and simply of the value of *seeing* a work *intended* to be seen as well as heard, something a lot of musical fans can easily forget when access to professional productions can be so hard and expensive.

Obviously there are those to whom this will not appeal. It asks you to believe in that entirely fictional kind of love, the kind that, if we ever *do* feel it, always feels false and embarrassing in retrospect. But Sondheim is better than any trash novel-writer and he deals with this ultimate extreme by pushing it even further so as to be so close to the ridiculous that it becomes something else entirely - the narrowminded might still laugh, but if you're prepared to risk going deeper, the investment is paid off. The actors in this production, particularly Donna Murphy, completely absorb themselves in their roles and truly give their all, the final scene between Fosca and Giorgio being perhaps one of the most intense, painful, and beautiful moments on the screen, merely from the exhausted, "hopelessly in love" expressions on both actors' faces. The movie is beautiful if you can find a way to let it in. You'll find yourself, in the end, seeing the movie's true beauty, repeating the movie's most profound line, "I don't know how I let you so far inside my mind, but there you are and there you will stay, how could I ever wish you away?"

For some reason there's no credit given here for the 1981 Italian film this musical is based on - Ruggero Maccari and Ettore Scola's "Passione d'amore" - which, in turn, was based on the novel "Fosca" by Iginio Ugo Tarchetti. All versions are well worth checking out! :)