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If you're familiar with James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim's 1994 musical adaptation of the 1981 film Passione D'Amore, you may be wondering how this is possible. After all, this is one of the most nakedly emotional of all Sondheim outings, never shirking from fiery declarations of adoration or arousal three robustly detailed characters' existences as fueled by the basest (and, as the show argues it, most important) feelings anyone can experience. It shouldn't be possible for Lapine's tale of Italian officer Giorgio, who's torn between the gorgeous and supple but married Clara and the sickly, ugly Fosca, whom he can't stand but who sees in him her salvation, to leave you cold. Yet, as rendered by director John Doyle, there is no other natural response. This is not, strictly speaking, a surprise. In all his work in New York, Doyle has demonstrated little interest in or understanding of the musical as a storytelling form. By drowning the Broadway revivals of Sweeney Todd and Company in nonsensical staging concepts that demanded the actors play their own instruments, the new musicals A Catered Affair and Road Show in ironic detachment that ran counter to their natures as pieces of writing, and the Encores! staging of Where's Charley? in a humorless, focus-obscuring haze, it's always seemed as though Doyle's vision of a show has been more important to him than its actual content. Still, even someone who has been unimpressed, and often appalled, by Doyle's previous efforts (such as yours truly) had no reason to believe he'd get the basics wrong this time. The first scene finds Giorgio and Clara frolicking in a bed and singing of their rendezvous against some of Sondheim's most rapturous music; the evening's inciting lyric tells you everything: "I'm so happy / I'm afraid I'll die / Here in your arms." And when Giorgio is transferred and must live through Clara's letters, and dodge the advances of Fosca after encouraging her with kindness no one else shows her, the madness of unchecked emotions—both constructive and destructive—obviously isn't just the primary subject. It's the only subject. And yet, Doyle plants his Giorgio (Ryan Silverman) and Clara (Melissa Errico) robotically on the floor, pawing each other with all the lust of mannequins in a high school sex-ed class. The fully clothed Errico does not appear to be enjoying herself as she perches atop the fully clothed and likewise indifferent Silverman, their vocals closer to a repudiation of happiness than an embrace of it. Things scarcely improve once Fosca (Judy Kuhn) enters the picture; you don't even sense her requisite yearning for knowledge from books, the only companions she can bear, so her eventual pursuit of Giorgio has no chance. Nor does Doyle's refusal to let the actors look at each other most of the time bring them closer to each other or us closer to them. There are other problems as well. The pacing is glacial. For the most "erotic" scenes, the lack of a bed is an enormous impediment (sometimes two chairs are employed, sometimes just the floor). And the late-show flashback, in which members of his all-male ensemble essay female characters to mood-obliterating laughter from the audience, spoils a critical dramatic moment. But in his handling of most of the transition scenes, usually involving the stiff-backed, straight-faced officers with whom Giorgio serves, Doyle approaches adequacy with his staging. He also makes fair use of his own ramshackle-chic boudoir set design, Ann Hould-Ward's handsome costumes, and Jane Cox's lights. And, through whatever method, he's guided Stephen Bogardus, as Fosca's cousin and the colonel in charge of the regiment, and Tom Nelis, as the doctor who pushes Giorgio into Fosca's arms, to performances that approximate their appropriate burn. Their roles are tiny, however—the three leads must run the show, and these cannot. Silverman possesses a gorgeous, resonant baritone, but is so vacant of expression and monotonic in line delivery throughout that he never registers as more than a rusting statue that's somehow been (slightly) animated. Errico's usual upper-crust elegance and swirling soprano should be just right for Clara, but her refusal to drop her sunny demeanor and reveal the shackles of responsibility behind her pain leave her every bit as much of a cipher as Silverman. As for their chemistry together, they display none. Kuhn works harder than anyone else onstage, and must contend with externals they don't—her costumes are dazzlingly unflattering, she looks roughly 20 years too old for the part, and she seems to be wearing no makeup—but simply does not reach the required heights. Fosca's rage at her own condition, and the out-of-control hormones that lead her to go after Giorgio at any cost, are absent from Kuhn's rendition, completely tamped down and hidden as though she's afraid of offending someone. She belts her songs acceptably, but with no heat underneath them, nothing ignites. This is, perhaps, this evening's biggest shock. Kuhn was an unstoppable force as Fosca at the Kennedy Center in 2002, and one had every reason to expect her to unleash the same viral vitality here. But in Washington, D.C., she had a director (Eric Schaeffer) who gave her and her cast mates permission to explore the deepest and darkest recesses of the heart to find the anguish, ecstasy, and the intensity that drive all of us—and this show. Why Doyle wanted to direct Passion but not investigate any of those qualities himself is this production's most devastating and maddening unanswered question.
Passion
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