Review: An intimate ‘Passion' from Blank Theatre Co.

Chicago Tribune

3 days ago

Most of the great Stephen Sondheim musicals flowed from notions conceived by others. But creating 'Sweeney Todd' as a musical was Sondheim's idea and so was 'Passion,' his intense 1994 collaboration with James Lapine, now on very intimate view from Blank Theatre Company in the tiny downstairs studio within the Greenhouse Theater Center in Lincoln Park
Based on both a novel and a movie, 'Passion' is the story of a soldier, Giorgio (Evan Bradford), who we first see making love to Clara (Rachel Guth), a beautiful married woman. But when he gets posted to another town, Giorgio becomes involved with Fosca (Brittney Brown), the cousin of his commanding officer, an obsessive, hyper-intense woman disfigured by epilepsy and capable of love on a level that Giorgio had not previously conceived as even humanly possible.
Among myriad other exquisitely detailed observations, 'Passion' offers Sondheim's most explicit declaration of the existential imperative to love.
'Loving you is not a choice, it's who I am,' sings Fosca, Later on in that lyric, typifying the thesis of the whole show, she describes how the act of loving, although more painful than joyous, helps her define her reason for being. In this show, loving does not mean subjugating oneself but using it to find purpose. It's all with Sondheim's lifelong thesis that the only things that truly outlive you are children and art.
'Passion' is, to say the least, a very tricky show. Fosca is an especially difficult role; I remember, from some 18 years ago, how much it challenged Ana Gasteyer at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. And even by the standards of Chicago's storefront spaces, this one is very small, a match for this theater company's budget. Director Danny Kapinos has Clara and Giorgio initially making love on a fixed slab, a nod to the opening tableaux Sondheim desired. But then he gets stuck with it all night long, and the rest of the cast have to keep stepping out of its way.
In general, my view of Blank's plucky work in town so far is that its artistic leadership has to find ways to produce these musicals in ways that depart more radically from traditional stagings and that match both their spaces and the young talent they're able to recruit. Here, something simpler and even more concert-style would have sufficed; the show struggles with a backdrop that it wants to be variously firm and translucent, but the audience is simply too close to pull that off, so the requisite fluidity is hard to feel.
All that said, there's also much to enjoy from Blank this summer. The standout performance here is from Bradford, an excellent young performer who does a great deal with what can be a thankless role of dubious empathic appeal, given that he finds himself torn between an affair with a married woman and a woman to whom Giorgio finds himself superior. But Bradford actually forges quite the likable guy and, especially when joined by Guth, a lovely singer, the sound that comes from the stage is quite rich. I feel like I can tell when the members of the Church of Sondheim are present off-Loop, and they were Thursday night, and they demonstrably approved of what they were hearing.
Brown throws herself courageously at Fosca and her work is unstintingly honest and vulnerable. Musically, she gets some of the way there, no small feat. But her Fosca is a tad too, well, conventionally appealing, for the show fully to work. The show is structured so that Giorgio has first to overcome what can only be described as revulsion in order to arrive at the realization that to be on the receiving end of the most intense love imaginable can mean you start feeling it back yourself.
Review: 'Passion' (3 stars)
When: Through Aug. 10
Where: Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.
Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Tickets: $15-$35 at www.blanktheatrecompany.org