Sondheim's 'Passion' at the Arden (first review)

“Beauty is something one pays for,” says Doctor Tambourri, a character in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Passion. But he doesn’t mean that we have to buy beauty; he means that, just like Spider-Man’s powers, with beauty comes responsibility.

It’s an odd statement in a play that seems to say that only beauty is worthy of being loved, that only mental illness could cause one to fall in love with anything that is less than beautiful. Or perhaps the message is that love is a mental illness that drives you mad, unable to function in the world, unable to distinguish between what is beautiful and what is not.

The story is adapted from Ettore Scola’s 1981 film Passione d’Amore, which is based on the 1869 book Fosca by Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, about his romance with an epileptic woman. It purports to be about love, though none of the characters seems to know much about what love is.

Simply irresistible

In Passion, our hero, the attractive Captain Giorgio Bachetti (Ben Michael), is irresistible to women, at least to the women in this play. We hear that he saved a comrade in battle, so, we think, he must be brave, must be worthy, even if nothing he does supports that at first. He is hopelessly in love with Clara (Jennie Eisenhower), who, we are told over and over again, is beautiful, as if beauty is a trait to be admired for itself alone. But does she possess any virtues other than being beautiful and good in bed? We know that she has a husband and a child she ignores to be with Giorgio, even if she won’t abandon her son until he’s grown. Giorgio claims to respect her, but are his standards so low he doesn’t find her behavior just a little questionable?

Giorgio is sent away to a remote outpost where he is surrounded by a world of soldiers and one sickly woman, Fosca (Liz Filios), cousin to the colonel. Where Clara is beautiful, Fosca is said to be ugly — even worse, she is obsessive, manipulating everyone around her. She has a mortal illness, we learn, which is real but exacerbated by her mental state. “Those are hysterical convulsions,” the doctor explains to Giorgio. “One might say that her nerves are exposed, where ours are protected by a firm layer of skin.”

Fosca’s cousin, Colonel Ricci (Ben Dibble), who claims to care for her, is nonetheless convinced that she cannot be loved because she is unattractive. So when he reads a love letter to her from Giorgio, he can only assume Giorgio wants to take advantage of her.

Beauty and the beast

But what is ugliness on the stage? Just as boredom cannot be portrayed by being truly boring for fear of actually boring an audience, so ugly is hinted at by dark clothes, unkempt hair, and lack of makeup. The “ugly” Fosca is not really ugly to us, except that we are told so often that she is unattractive that we come to accept it as true.

The most puzzling character, perhaps, is Doctor Tambourri (Frank X), who urges Giorgio to acquiesce to Fosca’s demands and then tries to save him from her clutches. What motivates him is never made clear.

In this play, values are skewed. Giorgio must choose between a beloved adulteress and an unattractive stalker who loves him. He is so upset by this choice that he has a breakdown and needs medical leave to recover from having finally discovered what love is.

But what is love?

An unanswered question

Sondheim, who is being honored with the Arden’s first Master Storyteller Award on June 1, seems to be arguing with himself about this topic. “I thought I knew what love was,” Giorgio begins, equating feelings like yearning and happiness with love. When Fosca enters his life with her relentless pursuit, he tells her love is not an “endless and insatiable smothering pursuit,” not “a constant demand.” But when she has reached into his heart and shattered his life, he discovers that “Love is not pretty or safe or easy.” Fosca, meanwhile, has her own revelation: “To die loved is to have lived.” But if love leads to death and madness, isn’t that a little like Thelma and Louise discovering freedom as they plunge over the cliff?

This being Sondheim, it's a play told in music. The sound of a military march blends and mixes with more lyrical tunes. “They hear drums, we hear music,” Fosca tells Giorgio, asking for his friendship, and the score reflects the different tunes that each one hears.

Dark walls tower over a minimal set — a bed, a table, and chairs in the officers’ dining room, a seat on a train. Opening the panels provides glimpses of the world beyond. In some cases, projections tell another story than the one we are watching.

The singing is strong, the acting less so. The men seem stilted and ill at ease. The scenes between the soldiers dining or playing pool feel awkward, contrived, and unnecessary. Eisenhower and Filios seem more at home in their roles, portraying two very different women coming to terms with love.

And just like recent Bachelors and Bachelorettes, they may have grown up enough to comprehend love, but they haven’t necessarily found their happy ending.

For a review by Steve Cohen, click here.