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

This is the story of a handsome and charming man, Giorgio (Ben Michael), who turns away from an affair with the beautiful Clara (Jennie Eisenhower), who will not leave her husband and child; he chooses, instead, the unattractive, obsessive Fosca (Liz Filios).

Naomi Orwin reflected the feelings of many when she called Passion “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.”

Finally falling

But they, and she, got it wrong. Sondheim is saying that love comes from sources that seem unlikely and at times when you least expect it — there’s no logic to it. He wrote this musical when he, at age 63, had just fallen in love with dramatist and record producer Peter Jones. Sondheim told the New York Times that previously he had never been in love.

"Passion is about how the force of somebody's feelings for you can crack you open," said Sondheim, "and how it is the life force in a deadened world." His character Giorgio sings of "A love that, like a knife / Has cut into a life / I wanted left alone."

An analytical man of great intellect, Sondheim here was saying that love is not logical. As the jazz critic Frances Davis pointed out, “Audiences had trouble accepting Giorgio's final change of heart. It struck them as illogical, and it is.”

Old wounds

In examining the connection between Passion and Sondheim’s own life, do not jump to the conclusion that Sondheim fell for a physically ugly person, as Giorgio did. Rather, the composer thought that he was the one who was ugly and undeserving. Sondheim has been open about his unhappy childhood. He told biographer Meryle Secrest: “[My mother] used me the way she used [my father], to come on to and to berate, beat up on, you see. What she did. . . .was treat me like dirt.” She even wrote Stephen a letter saying she regretted giving him birth. His father abandoned them both when Stephen was ten.

With this in mind, imagine a demanding and obsessive Sondheim being desired by a charming and handsome young man, and you will appreciate Passion more.

Music more than words

Instead of trying to figure out the logic of Passion, remember that Sondheim describes it as an opera — that is, it’s a drama told more through music than words. It is reminiscent of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande or Montemezzi’s L'amore dei tre re (The Love of Three Kings), both of which, perhaps subconsciously, influenced Passion. Both are from the same period in which Passion is set, and The Love of Three Kings is set in the same region of northern Italy.

Like those operas, Passion relies on repetitive, obsessive motifs. With no set arias or songs, it is a dreamlike hypnotic net of music, fragile and mysterious. A gaunt motif voiced by woodwinds as Fosca sings "I Wish I Could Forget You" is heard repeatedly afterward, expressing her longing — and of course Fosca is quite similar to the pale and unhappy Mélisande.

Much of the beauty of Passion is due to Jonathan Tunick’s haunting orchestration, well-played in this production by a nine-member ensemble conducted by Amanda Morton. Jorge Cousineau’s scenic concept nicely expanded the show’s horizons.

Critic Martin Bernheimer wrote about Pelléas, “It is possible to enjoy this opera sober, but it should have special appeal to people tripping on drugs.” Now there’s an interesting suggestion for Passion.