Passions

Dueling passions in one of Stephen Sondheim's most romantic musicals

In her final novel, Clock Without Hands, Carson McCullers writes:

Passion makes you daydream, destroys concentration on arithmetic, and at the time you most yearn to be witty, makes you feel like a fool. In early youth, love at first sight, that epitome of passion, turns you into a zombie so that you don't realize if you're sitting up or lying down, and you can't remember what you have just eaten to save your life.

Passion queers everything. And Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical Passion, recorded for Public Television in 1996, seems a two-hour illustration of that.

Based on Ettore Scola's Passione d'Amore (1981), itself an adaptation of I.U. Tarchetti's 1869 novel Fosca, the musical traces the invalid Fosca's infatuation with Giorgio, a young captain garrisoned in the provincial mountain town where she lives with her cousin, Colonel Ricci. Giorgio is already involved with the married Clara, who refuses to leave her husband and son for him. Initially taking pity on Fosca, Giorgio offers his friendship, but she wants more. She considers him a kindred soul in that, unlike his fellow officers, he reads and has an appreciation for the arts. She has watched him with his men and notes that "They hear drums/You hear music/As do I."

For Giorgio and the audience, the idea of loving Fosca initially seems unthinkable. His lover Clara is a beautiful, full-bodied woman, and when the actors in the roles, Jere Shea and Marin Mazzie, share a duet in bed at the show's opening, they seem like perfect wedding-cake toppers. Theirs is the idealized romantic pairing of musical comedy, even though Clara is unavailable to him. Or perhaps they're perfect because she's unavailable. Their big duet, "Happiness," is more about yearning than union. She may sing that "I thought where there was love/There was shame./But with you/There's just happiness," but their love is not won freely. Even though she claims to want to spend her life with him, it's a dream deferred. She can't leave her husband until her son is grown for fear of losing her child. But isn't yearning a better subject for a musical than union. Most shows end after the couples have been united following a series of crises that keep them apart so they can sing of how much they want each other. The few musicals that follow their leads after marriage, like Carousel or I Do, I Do, have plots that throw obstacles in their way, so they're never completely happy until the end (and when you're married to an abusive lout like Billy Bigelow, what greater comfort can there be than knowing he's dead; he may be with you in spirit, but he can never lay hands on you again).

If yearning is more dramatic than union, of course, poor Fosca holds a near monopoly on the drama in Passion. As detailed in a musical flashback, she was always a plain woman, but she fell prey to a bogus count who married her and bled her family dry. Once he had been exposed, Fosca developed the illnesses that plague her throughout the show. Her sickliness makes her an inherently queer figure. As she states in her first scene, "Sickness is as normal to me, as health is to you." But though she initially seems reconciled to her limitations, singing "How can I have expectations?/Look at me….I do not hope for what I cannot have!/I do not cling to things I cannot keep!," she falls in love with Giorgio and pursues him with an obsessive fervor.

In a conventional musical, Fosca would be the villain, keeping the beautiful, young lovers apart. But Sondheim and Lapine are anything but conventional. The plot is structured to privilege Fosca and her misplaced passion. When Giorgio writes to Clara about Fosca, she cautions him to keep his distance, leading to a series of choices on his part that just deepen Fosca's obsession. Suddenly, the ideal beauty seems cruel, even jealous of a woman who, in conventional terms, poses no threat to her. If there's a flaw in the plot it's that Giorgio, at this point, seems too callow to deserve Fosca's love. Fortunately, Shea plays him with vulnerability that keeps the character appealing. From the start, you can see what Fosca sees in him, and over time you may even question, as Fosca does, how truly deep his romance with Clara is.

It helps tremendously that Fosca is played with depth and restraint by Donna Murphy. Not living in New York, I've never had the chance to see Murphy on stage, though I've read raves for her work from others. In the few recordings I've heard besides Passions, she demonstrates a beautiful mezzo voice but also a tendency to overdue things when given her head. That's borne out with the numbers from her revival of Wonderful Town that have turned up on line. In "A Hundred Easy Ways to Lose a Man," she overplays the jokes so much it makes the material seem more labored than it is. And she mugs so shamelessly during "Swing," a wonderful piece of character development as originally played by Rosalind Russell, that she completely loses the song's throughline.

 Working with Lapine (who also directs) and Sondheim, however, she gives herself over entirely to the material. Lapine wisely doesn't go overboard making Fosca physically repellent. He just has her painted down a bit, and director and actor have worked out a halting, stooped walk that makes her physical condition clear. Sondheim's music lets her glow vocally, with deep notes and repeated phrases that bring her passions to life. Before the show is over, pretty little Clara doesn't stand a chance.

Recorded stage shows can often be a chore to watch. The actors often keep their performances pitched for the last balcony and come off forced and phony when the camera moves in for close-ups. With Passions, that's not the case. This is already one of Sondheim's most fluid and intimate musicals — really more of a chamber opera than a Broadway show — and this is the rare taped version that reveals subtleties a live audience might have missed. Lapine only occasionally falls prey to another danger of the recorded production, the over-reliance on close-ups. That's only really a problem when Giorgio reunites with Clara on leave in Milan while Fosca sings in the background. The point of the number is the contrast between Fosca's solitude and their togetherness, creating the sensation that she's starting to tear the couple apart. Lapine keeps the camera on Shea and Mazzie so much, however, that Murphy seems almost an afterthought in the trio, her disembodied voice hardly completing with their physical presence. It contradicts everything else he and Sondheim have done to make her role in the triangle the primarily one. Sometimes the perpetual long shot most often associated with stage pictures isn't such a bad idea.

Otherwise, the recorded production is pretty much seamless. Filmed just after the play's original Broadway run ended, it preserves not just the original leads' performances, but strong supporting turns from people like Gregg Edelman as Fosca's cousin and the late Tom Aldredge and Francis Ruivivar as the company doctor and an officer in love with opera, respectively. The production flows beautifully on Adrianne Lobel's simple but effectively painted sets, a symphony in siennas that gives the whole thing a glow. It's a great record of a strong production and, when Murphy and Shea are digging deep into their characters' emotional lives, almost a privilege to watch.

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Grasping at happiness in Keep the Lights On

Ira Sachs shoots his semi-autobiographical feature Keep the Lights On (2012) as if it were an Ingmar Bergman film. The tale of a gay romance destroyed by one partner's drug use and the other's dogged determination to save his addict boyfriend places its passions within the characters rather than between them. That's partly a product of Sachs' approach to filming the material. He uses the camera as an objective observer. The first time the lawyer, Paul (Zachary Booth) lights up a crack pipe during a date with filmmaker Erik (Thure Lindhardt), there's none of the foreboding music or harsh angles of a Hollywood anti-drug screed. Sachs shoots the encounter straight on. Indeed, Paul's drug use seems almost a matter-of-fact part of his character. To know him is to put up with him. The camera never sides with Erik as he deals with Paul's lengthy absences and self-destructive behavior. It just records the dissolution of a relationship.

Keep the Lights On is not for all audiences. It's not a romantic comedy, nor does it wallow in Erik's inability to find and keep a partner. And the dialogue is high context — characters don't tell each other things they know already just so the audience will be clued in. You have to pay attention to contextual clues to follow the action. After suffering through independent gay films that seemed to be set in fantasy worlds divorced from the realities of LGBTQ life or scripts whose writers seem to think all they have to do to strike a blow for inclusion is turn the mean girls of a stereotypical high school rom com into gay men, however, you may find Sachs' point of view refreshing. He creates an illusion of honesty that lends the story emotional weight without pounding you over the head.

Sachs based the script — co-written with Mauricio Zacharias, who would become a frequent collaborator — on his relationship with literary agent Bill Clegg, who told his side of the story in his 2010 memoir Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man. Even though Paul does some horrid things to Erik, including hiring a hustler to have sex with him in a hotel suite while Erik is waiting in the next room, the film never judges him. By the end, he even seems to have a more honest take on the relationship than does Erik.

Erik's staying with Paul through the worst could seem masochistic, but Sachs provides some context that mitigates that impression. The film opens with Erik on a telephone hot line looking for sex and then follows him on an unpromising hook-up. That simply and even humorously sets up the world in which he's looking for love. The hot line calls are brief, with one of the parties hanging up when things don't fit some prescribed formula for sex or romance. His hook-up admits up front that he has a partner, and he wants Erik to admire his physique from across the room before he'll go any further. If those are the options, maybe trying to get an otherwise charming partner through drug addiction doesn't seem like such a deal-breaker.

Sachs is a master at revealing characters through details. The film covers eight years, from Erik's initial hook-up with Paul in 1998 to their meeting after Paul's second stint in rehab in 2006. There are quick scenes during the relationship that fill us in on Erik's career trajectory as he moves from borrowing money from his family for his big project, a documentary about gay photographer and filmmaker Avery Willard, to the film's successful release. We see him win a film festival award for the film, but he never tells anybody how well he's doing. Rather, we see the décor in his apartment gradually change to reflect his success.

The other characters are also drawn simply. The wonderfully open actress Julianne Nicholson has the largest supporting role, as one of Erik's colleagues. In just a few scenes, she and the writers create a woman as adrift as Erik when it comes to relationships. She even tries to get him to agree to help her get pregnant if she can't find a suitable partner by a certain time. Other characters are etched with a gesture or a look. You can tell by the way another friend, Russ (Sebastian La Cause), hugs Erik after a disastrous dinner that he has a crush on him.

When Erik and Paul reconnect in 2006, you don't need dialogue to tell you they haven't seen each other in a while. It's all there in the way they touch, the way they look at each other across a restaurant table. That scene is so skillfully done it's almost a pity the film doesn't end there. In the final scenes, Sachs' high-context writing actually becomes a problem. The final developments in the relationship seem to come from nowhere. Still, the film never gives into sentimentality. There are no jumps into a future where Erik has finally found happiness. Within the world of Keep the Lights On, there are no happy endings, just more drifting through an uncertain emotional landscape in search of something less terrible than cruising for a quick hook-up.

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Fashion becomes art at the climax of House of Z.

Growing up in Philadelphia, I was regularly exposed to a commercial jingle suggesting "If you've got a passion for fashion/And you've got a craving for savings/Take the wheel of your automobile/And swing on down to Ideal." The current spate of design competition shows on cable seem created for people with a passion for fashion, though the types of clothing produced by contestants don't seem likely to satisfy any cravings for savings. With the work of Project Runway judge Zac Posen, however, there's really no price tag that's appropriate. As shown in the documentary House of Z (2017), he has the ability to transcend clothing and even fashion to create works of art.

Director Sandy Chronopoulos structures the film as though it were the finale of a reality competition like Project Runway. Focusing on his Fall 2014 Fashion Week show, she builds suspense by positioning the collection as a comeback after the decline of the fashion market following the 2008 recession and a disastrous Paris show in 2010. The 2014 show breaks from tradition. At the last minute Posen pulls out of the usual Fashion Week venues to present in his own studio, and he's only showing 25 looks, when the average collection can be as large as 75. Even that number is jeopardized when the showpiece of the collection, an ornate gown modeled on the Guggenheim's ceiling, has so many construction problems it may not make it to the runway.

All of this is very entertaining. It's a model of how to cut together documentary footage, interviews and archival materials to tell a story. It's so persuasive you may overlook the fact that the entire film was made with Posen's full cooperation, including appearances by family members, champions in the press and current colleagues. That certainly blurs the lines between documentary and publicity. Yet it's hard to deny the artistry of his work as a designer. In addition, his interviews have a candor that lends the story credibility. When he owns the past mistakes that led to a rift with his mother and sister, who had helped him found his atelier, it seems like a privileged view inside the unattainable world of glamour. Nor can you deny the quality of his work, particularly when that massive gown walks the runway.

This is hardly a rags to riches story. Even Posen's supporters in the press have been quick to note that his initial success was helped greatly by his connections within the fashion industry. Posen is the son of artist Stephen Posen and corporate attorney, Susan Orzack Posen, who exposed him to culture from an early age. One of his childhood friends was Anna Wintour's son, which guaranteed him an in at Vogue. None of that would have mattered, however, without talent. Chronopoulous includes shots of student work and his first showing (in 2001) that clearly position him as a major talent from the start. Posen has a special knack for re-working the best of the past with a contemporary edge in the choice of materials, colors and detail, all accomplished with impeccable craftsmanship. The film makes much of the fact that he's one of the few designers who still has all of his work done in-house, and there's a good deal of footage showing him taking a hand in the construction of his garments.

It's a rarified world the film reveals. Some of the most elaborate designs really couldn't be worn by anybody, and several would be impossible to produce at a saleable price. That's not necessarily a bad thing. His looks go beyond the utilitarian to become their own art forma. There's even an autobiographical element to the work, as the first, technically accomplished pieces, the work of a young artist celebrating his own abilities, become more refined with maturity, then veer into gimmickry during the period in which he lost touch with his talent and his roots only to come back to the greater refinement and epic vision of a more mature designer. Ultimately, that makes fashion the entire story, and it's a pretty powerful one as his work queers our notions of conventional clothing and turns his models into creatures of fantasy.