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Sondheim's 'Passion' ignites at Arden Theatre

Some men just love trouble, and some women are happy to provide it. Such are the inflammations in the Arden Theatre's production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's dark, romantic Passion. This is not "another simple love story," sing its entangled leads, Clara and Giorgio. Although Clara is married with a young child, and Giorgio is about to tell her he's shipping off to a provincial military outpost in a few days, they don't yet know the half of it.

Jennie Eisenhower and Ben Michael play two lovers with flawed affections in Arden Theatre's production of "Passion."
Jennie Eisenhower and Ben Michael play two lovers with flawed affections in Arden Theatre's production of "Passion."Read moreMARK GARVIN

Some men just love trouble, and some women are happy to provide it. Such are the inflammations in the Arden Theatre's production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's dark, romantic Passion. This is not "another simple love story," sing its entangled leads, Clara and Giorgio. Although Clara is married with a young child, and Giorgio is about to tell her he's shipping off to a provincial military outpost in a few days, they don't yet know the half of it.

Based on Ettore Scola's 1981 film Passione d'Amore (itself based on a 19th-century Italian novel), Passion won four Tony Awards, though it remained on Broadway less than a year. And this chamber musical isn't an easy piece. It takes a while for Passion's seduction to take hold, but once it does, there's no turning away. Directed by Terrence J. Nolan, its early scenes are stiff and presentational, Ben Michael's Giorgio a tin soldier beside Jennie Eisenhower's exuberant Clara, all long brown ringlets and tulip-colored silks. And then we meet Liz Filios' Fosca, an ill, pale, unsympathetic woman - the cousin of Col. Ricci (Ben Dibble), leader of Giorgio's company - who spends her free time locked away, wailing in pain.

Fosca's obsession with Giorgio drives the rest of the show, and it's an ugly thing to watch her debase herself, begging Giorgio to write her a love note, following him wherever he goes, despite his obvious disgust. "Beauty is power, longing a disease," she sings. Perhaps that disease is a form of consumption, because Fosca's sick longing consumes Giorgio in a way Clara's beauty cannot.

Filios' bold characterization of Fosca, shameless enough to garner uncomfortable audience laughter, and sung gorgeously - the best I've seen from her, for sure - gets beneath Sondheim's lyrics into the hidden corners of these lovers' psychology. They're not nice people, not even particularly good people, although Clara and Giorgio try to persuade themselves otherwise, but in their flawed affections, they're undeniably human.

While Filios and Eisenhower really shine here as opposing forces, Jorge Cousineau's set and projections and Thom Weaver's lighting work together spectacularly to depict contrasts in mood, with floor-to-ceiling dark wooden shutters that slide open, showing a view of Rome or a sepia-toned flashback, or shut tight in a claustrophobic embrace, its lovers bathed in a Caravaggio splinter of sunlight.

As another short-lived female singer once declared, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose," Sondheim, through Fosca, shows us that freedom can be as terrible as it is beautiful.