50 Favourite Musicals: 44: PASSION (1994) (Stephen Sondheim)

The 50 shows that have stood out down the years and, as we get up among the paint cards, the shows that have become the cast recording of my life:

First performed: 1994, Plymouth Theatre, NY
First seen by me: 1996, Queens Theatre, London

Productions seen: three

Score: Stephen Sondheim
Book: James Lapine

Plot:  In the 1860s, a young Captain in the Italian army is transferred to a remote outpost, leaving his mistress in Milan.  While there he becomes the object of obsessive desire for a withdrawn and sickly woman, his Colonel's cousin.  Her passion repels him but love is a strange thing...

Five memorable numbers: LOVING YOU, I WISH I COULD FORGET YOU, HAPPINESS, I READ, FINALE

Sondheim's deeply intense musical - based on a novel by Iginio Ugo Tarchetti and the Italian film adaptation by Ettore Scola - can leave you feeling claustrophobic at times; it is relentless in it's exploration of the mysterious power of love with hardly any humour to leaven it.  A remarkable chamber musical, it slowly ebbs into your mind as you watch Giorgio - a man who has always been in control of his love life - become enmeshed and undone by Fosca's unrelenting passion.  I had been swept away by the Broadway cast recording but was left somewhat cold by the London premiere where a torturous Maria Friedman and somnambulist Michael Ball rattled around the large Queens Theatre stage but subsequent smaller-scale productions have hit the show's emotional core, culminating in Jamie Lloyd's excellent Donmar production in 2010 which pared the basilisk-stare of Elena Roger's Fosca against the emotional fragility of David Thaxton's Giorgio.

Here the original Fosca, Donna Murphy, casts a spell with LOVING YOU, the score's emotional peak..

The 2010 Chrissies!

As 2011 lies before us, all unknown and untouched, it's time to done your gayest apparel as I whisk you to the most important award ceremony of the season... The Chrissies! As is tradition we start with the THEATRE AWARDS:

Best Drama/Comedy:

AFTER THE DANCE by Terence Rattigan at the Lyttleton, National Theatre

nominees - ALL MY SONS (Apollo); KING LEAR (Donmar); LONDON ASSURANCE (National Theatre); SPRING STORM (National Theatre)

Best Musical:

HAIR at Gielgud Theatre nominees - SOUTH PACIFIC (Lincoln Center, NY); CINDERELLA (Sadler's Wells); PASSION (Donmar); A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC (Walter Kerr Theatre, NY)

Best Actor (Drama/Comedy):DAVID SUCHET (All My Sons, Apollo) nominees - DEREK JACOBI (King Lear); RORY KINNEAR (Hamlet); SIMON RUSSELL BEALE (London Assurance); JONATHAN PRYCE (The Caretaker)

Best Actor (Musical):GAVIN CREEL (Hair, Gielgud) nominees - DAVID PITTSINGER (South Pacific, NY); SAHR NGAUJAH (Fela! National Theatre); ALEXANDER HANSON (Little Night Music, NY); KEVIN MAMBO (Fela! NY)

Best Actress (Drama/Comedy):NANCY CARROLL (After The Dance, National Theatre) nominees - ZOE WANAMAKER (All My Sons); DEBORAH FINDLAY (The Glass Menagerie); HARRIET WALTER (Women Beware Women); FIONA SHAW (London Assurance)

Best Actress (Musical):ELENA ROGER (Passion, Donmar) nominees - TRACIE BENNETT (Over The Rainbow); LAURA OSNES (South Pacific, NY); SHERIDAN SMITH (Legally Blonde); JENNA RUSSELL (Into The Woods)

Best Supporting Actor (Drama/Comedy):ADRIAN SCARBOROUGH (After The Dance, National Theatre) nominees - OLIVER FORD DAVIES (The Crucible); PETER McDONALD (The Caretaker); RON COOK (King Lear); SIMON PAISLEY DAY (Private Lives)

Best Supporting Actor (Musical):NICK HOLDER (Assassins) nominees - BRYCE RYNESS (Hair, NY); MICHAEL XAVIER (Into The Woods); ANDREW SAMONSKY (South Pacific, NY); DARIUS NICHOLS (Hair)

Best Supporting Actress (Drama/Comedy):SINEAD MATTHEWS (The Glass Menagerie, Young Vic) nominees - BETTRYS JONES (The Crucible); CLARE HIGGINS (Hamlet); JUSTINE MITCHELL (King Lear); JACQUELINE KING (Summer Storm)

Best Supporting Actress (Musical):ANGELA LANSBURY (A Little Night Music, NY) nominees - CAISSIE LEVY (Hair); ALISON CASE (Hair, London); LORETTA ABLES SAYER (South Pacific, NY); BEVERLY RUDD (Into The Woods)

Best Director:HOWARD DAVIES (All My Sons, Apollo) nominees - MICHAEL GRANDAGE (King Lear); BARTLETT SHER (South Pacific, NY); THEA SHARROCK (After The Dance); NICHOLAS HYTNER (London Assurance)

Best Designer:LEZ BROTHERSTON (Cinderella, Sadler's Wells) nominees - BUNNY CHRISTIE (The White Guard); WILLIAM DUDLEY (All My Sons); HILDEGARD BECHTLER (After The Dance); MARK THOMPSON (London Assurance)

Best Lighting:NEIL AUSTIN (Passion, Donmar) nominees - NEIL AUSTIN (Cinderella); NEIL HENDERSON (All My Sons); JON CLARK (Hamlet); NEIL AUSTIN (The White Guard)

Best Choreography: MATTHEW BOURNE (Cinderella, Sadler's Wells) nominees - BILL T. JONES (Fela!); KAROL ARMITAGE (Hair); PAUL J. MEDFORD (Five Guys Named Moe); CHRISTOPHER GATTELLI (South Pacific, NY)

Now onto other awards! I have already chosen my Best Gig so onto Best Film - not a great year for cinema-going so my winner comes from 1939!

A WINDOW IN LONDON (Herbert Mason - Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas, Sally Gray) nominees: BEAUTIFUL DARLING; GRACE OF MY HEART; SHUTTER ISLAND; INCEPTION

Best Books read:MRS. WOOLF & THE SERVANTS (Alison Light)

nominees: VITA (Victoria Glendenning); TALKING THEATRE (Richard Eyre); I DOLL (Arthur Kane); THE SHIP THAT FLEW (Hilda Lewis)

Best Miscellaneous Entertaiment:

SONDHEIM @ 80 CONCERTS: MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG; COMPANY (Donmar at Queens Theatre)

nominees - THE SACRED MADE REAL (National Gallery); GUTTED (Riverside); STEPHEN SONDHEIM (Royal Festival Hall); GAUGUIN (Tate Modern)

This week we finally got to see PASSION at the Donmar. You know the year is speeding by when that show it seemed absurd to book so far in advance for is suddenly the next day.

I had deliberately not read any reviews for this production but I was worried going in as Jamie Lloyd is not a favorite director and I had heard there was 'streamlining' of the score - this worried me as the score for PASSION seems so hermetically-sealed that it's hard to see where trimming could take place without disrupting the flow.

However very soon into the show I was forgetting all my worries. Jamie Lloyd, for all his speeding problems, has directed the best version of the show I have seen. The original London production was top-heavy with the casting of Michael Ball and the over-rated Maria Friedman and the Bridewell production - as was usually the case with that theatre - was slightly under-whelmingly cast. But here, the production is as intense, focused and driven as the play's anti-heroine Fosca, it has the hothouse atmosphere of an invalid's sickbed.
The musical has a book by James Lapine and is based on Ettore Scola's 1981 film PASSIONE D'AMORE which is itself based on the novel 'Fosca' by Ugo Iginio Tarchetti. Tarchetti died of Tuberculosis aged only 29 while writing the novel so the strange, feverish nature of the story can be fully understood knowing that fact. The original production ran only nine months from 1994-95 but still deservedly won the Tony Awards for Best Musical, Score, Book and Actress for Donna Murphy.

Giorgio is an army Captain who is enjoying a passionate affair with the married Clara which is interrupted when he is drafted to a remote outpost. He is warmly welcomed by Colonel Ricci and Dr. Tambourri while being viewed somewhat suspiciously by his fellow soldiers for his literary interests. He soon learns there is another inhabitant of the outpost, the Colonel's sickly cousin Fosca who stays in her room and whose agonised cries are heard often.
Giorgio lends her some of his books and Fosca makes a rare appearance at dinner to thank him for his generosity which he confesses in his letters to Clara he only did at the prompting of the Doctor. It is soon apparent that Fosca has become obsessed with the handsome Captain and haunts Giorgio wherever he goes, driving him to distraction. His attempt to end their friendship leads to a decline in her health and the Doctor begs him to see Fosca again. Fosca asks one thing of him - that he writes her a love letter which she dictates much to his discomfort. He later learns she was married once but was swindled of her fortune and left destitute.

The constant drain on his emotions takes its toll and Giorgio becomes unwell. However he cannot bring himself to go on a lengthy sick leave which angers his superiors and makes him the subject of barrack room gossip. Giorgio slowly begins to question whose love is more real - Clara's carefully managed trysts or Fosca's total devotion. The news that Giorgio is to be transferred leads to a hysterical collapse from Fosca and the Colonel, suspecting Giorgio has led her on, challenges him to a duel...

Sondheim's lush score seems to never pause for a moment, using several leitmotifs to keep the music swirling around the mind only coming to rest really for two wonderfully pure love songs - or declarations of intent - sung by Fosca "I Wish I Could Forget You" and "Loving You". I defy anyone to listen to the score and then make the complaint that Sondheim is not a romantic composer.

The production has no interval so the plot's momentum is allowed to sweep one along unlike the original London production which had an interval after the scene where Fosca dictated the letter to Giorgio and which completely destroyed any intensity.

The usual Donmar design suspects are also much in evidence - Christopher Oram's stark set of three rounded double doorways beneath a painted faded mural of classical lovers is aided immeasurably by Neil Austin's romantic lighting, grey/blue for the outpost or warm sunlight for Clara's Milan.

The role of Fosca demands an actress who can turn on the intensity and Elena Roger can certainly do that. The Donmar's artistic director Michael Grandage is getting a lot of use out of her: she was his Evita in the West End, his Piaf at the Donmar and beyond, now she is Fosca... he must be scouring the shelves to see what will fit her ripe personality next as she ain't the easiest performer to fit in a show. One might suggest Googie Gomez in THE RITZ!

Her intensity and heavy accent at first pull the focus a little as there are no other attempts at Italian accents in the cast and I *did* fight hard to get the images of Edith Piaf, Rita Moreno and Liliane Montevecchi from colliding in my mind but slowly the intensity became muted and she had a wonderful quality of stillness in her solo numbers, you could feel the audience holding it's breath as she sang them.

She has been unfairly picked on by some - yes Whingers - but I am glad she played the role - it could have been Jenna Russell playing another Sondheim female role in an 'ecky thump' Northern accent.David Thaxton was new to me and I thought he excelled in the role of Giorgio, he has a fine singing voice and although his singing slightly overshadowed his acting he is still a name for the future methinks. Scarlett Strallen played Clara and, despite a worrying degree of Langfordism (Bonnie is her aunt) in voice and expression, she also was fine.

There was excellent support from Allan Corduner as the meddlesome Dr. Tambourri and David Birrell as Colonel Ricci. Birrell was sporting an eye patch from the incident in early October when the gun he uses in the duel scene misfired and led to him being hospitalised and a few shows cancelled as the Donmar has a no understudy policy. I should praise too the nine piece orchestra under the musical direction of Alan Williams for their rich, full sound.

It may not be one of Sondheim's more popular works but you will find PASSION a haunting experience if you can get a ticket.