Entertainment

‘Passion’ an emotional letdown

Imagine a luxury car, all sleek lines, buttery leather seats, exotic-wood dashboard. Then you step on the gas pedal, and find out it’s running on a measly four cylinders.

That’s pretty much the case with Stephen Sondheim’s newly revived 1994 chamber musical, “Passion”: It looks gorgeous but spins its wheels.

Ably abetted by lighting designer Jane Cox, director/designer John Doyle encased the action in a jewel box of dark velvet. And while Doyle’s made his name by having the actors in “Sweeney Todd” and “Company” play their own instruments, here he’s hired an actual orchestra — leaving the cast free to move about with choreographed precision. Most memorably, they alternately emerge and recede out of shadows on the stark, minimalist set, bathed in black and gold.

This is an appropriate setting for a piece, based on Ettore Scola’s 1981 movie “Passione d’Amore,” in which love, affecting body and soul, is a force both transcendent and destructive.

But “Passion” lacks a key ingredient — passion.

Doyle opens things dramatically with the gorgeous Clara (Melissa Errico) writhing in ecstasy atop of her lover, the dashing officer Giorgio (Ryan Silverman).

We won’t experience that intensity again.

The couple’s heated affair continues via letters after Giorgio’s transferred to a remote garrison. Book writer James Lapine (“Sunday in the Park With George,” “Into the Woods”) provides much of the narrative through their missives, even if the characters often seem to communicate in real time — think of a clunky 19th-century version of instant messaging.

Soon enough, though, Giorgio is bewitched by his commanding officer’s plain, sickly cousin, Fosca (Judy Kuhn), who looks as if she’s just been dug up from a grave. Close enough: That’s where Fosca is headed, but not before dragging Giorgio into her net of devouring, morbid love.

Though “Passion” features an array of soldiers, including the impressive Stephen Bogardus as Fosca’s protective cousin, Colonel Ricci, the focus is on the central trio.

The problem is that while they constantly sing of desire, there’s no trace of it here. Fosca tells us she’s falling for Giorgio, but the score doesn’t match her words. Indeed, this is Sondheim’s most monotonous effort — tellingly, the program doesn’t include song titles — and it often lapses into self-caricature.

It’s a tall order for the cast. As gifted as Kuhn is — her Cosette in the original “Les Misérables” is just one of several compelling performances over the years — she’s way too restrained here. After all, Fosca is an overheated, baroque character within whom love and death are intertwined. And the wooden Silverman (Raoul in “The Phantom of the Opera”) doesn’t sell his character’s switch from Clara to Fosca. Granted, it’s not convincingly explained anyway.

At least Errico (“Amour,” “My Fair Lady”) transitions beautifully from ravishment to pain. She makes us understand that love, like beauty, must be more than skin-deep. It’s a lesson the show as a whole could have taken to heart.