What do you think?
Rate this book
Passion
Winner of the 1994 Tony Awards for Best Book, Best Music and Lyrics, and Best Musical "Easily among Sondheim's best—subtle, rhapsodic and full of emotional depth." —David Patrick Stearns, USA Today "Hypnotic, rigorous, very risky...a major work." —Vincent Canby, New York Times "Held me in its grip...had me sobbing uncontrollably...Sondheim's deepest, most powerful work." —Robert Brustein, New Republic Passion is the third original collaboration between Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. Their first, Sunday in the Park with George, earned them a Pulitzer Prize. Their second, Into the Woods, won Tony, Grammy, Drama Desk, and Drama Critics Circle awards.
112 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1994
About the author
Stephen Sondheim
369 books263 followersStephen Joshua Sondheim was an American musical and film composer and lyricist, winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards (seven, more than any other composer), multiple Grammy Awards, and a Pulitzer Prize. He has been described as the Titan of the American Musical.
His most famous scores include (as composer/lyricist) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and Assassins, as well as the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy. He was president of the Dramatists Guild from 1973 to 1981.
His most famous scores include (as composer/lyricist) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and Assassins, as well as the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy. He was president of the Dramatists Guild from 1973 to 1981.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
March 8, 2023
“They hear drums, you hear music, as do I. Don’t you see? We’re the same, we are different.”
The great mystery of this show is Fosca: a woman guilty of not being beautiful–or rather, not being womanly. During her first scene, she confides that she is “going through a period of deep melancholy." But it becomes clear that this "period" is her entire life, and she's tortured by an inescapable feeling of unlovability. The men around her despise her, compare her to animals, infantilize her, and mock the very notion that she could ever be loved.
Opposite Fosca is Giorgio. He’s self-assured, kind, respected, and in a comfortable relationship with a married woman. But he too grapples with unbelonging, particularly as he struggles to fit in among every other male character in the show. He doesn’t drink with the other men, and he refuses to participate in their womanizing gossip. The other soldiers consider him aloof and detached and sometimes mock him, a typical reaction to an effeminate presence in a masculine space. Giorgio possesses a femininity that sticks out in his deeply masculine profession: “Imagine that,” he writes of himself, “a soldier who cries.”
Giorgio and Fosca are both gender outcasts, in one way or another. Fosca, however, seems to have come to terms with it while Giorgio remains in denial. She immediately sees that Giorgio is not like the other soldiers: “Perhaps it was the way you walked, the way you spoke to your men.” She cannot name specifically what sets him apart; gender expression is something much more holistic than that. Fosca also notices the mismatch between his feminine demeanor and masculine profession, even asking him, “Why is a man like you in the army?” His response: It was expected of him because of his father- assigned to him at birth. They are the same, they are different. They are drawn to each other because they are both outsiders. The difference is that Fosca understands why she is being allured; Giorgio does not.
“I’ve often wondered if you would love me as much if I were free.”
Giorgio’s lover, Clara, is the opposite of Fosca. She is the light to Fosca’s darkness: safe, gentle, beautiful, and motherly, a conventional model of womanhood. While Fosca is an ungendered social outcast, who’s brief foray into domesticity left her despondent, Clara’s womanhood is unquestioned. The show never depicts her interacting with her husband or child, but we don’t need to see evidence to know that she perfectly fills the role of wife and mother.
The two women present contrasting approaches to gender expression, and Giorgio is caught between them. I think Giorgio’s dilemma is an expression of his own struggle with gender expression. Clara is who he wishes he could be. He is perhaps using Clara as a vehicle for exploring his own femininity. After all, they describe their love as one “that fuses two into one … live as one, breathe as one, feel as one.” But that approach is obviously limited. Giorgio cannot liberate himself through Clara because Clara is not free either. In the end, it is Clara’s refusal to leave behind the heterosexual domesticity of being a wife and mother that leads to Giorgio abandoning her.
But Fosca is not what Giorgio wishes he could be, because Fosca has limited access to womanhood as well. If Fosca is not beautiful, how can she be accepted as a woman? After all, “being beautiful [is] the most important thing a woman can be.” Fosca knows that she’s a woman, but the rest of the world (apart from Giorgio) doesn’t accept her as one. She’s a social reject, poisoned by a fear of unlovability. If not beauty, what does Fosca possibly offer Giorgio?
“Give me a kiss. Yes, I know a woman shouldn’t ask such a thing. A woman shouldn’t have followed a man here. Well, given my appearance, I don’t behave as other women do.”
Fosca’s method of seducing Giorgio is… well, intrusive and kind of terrifying. There’s plenty to unpack about her actions, but what I’m curious about is why she thinks harassment is the right approach. Perhaps it’s that she felt flattered when Ludovic turned his eyes onto her, which is why she reuses some of his pick-up lines on Giorgio. But it’s probably because her only window into the world of romance is through books which surely feature these problematic romantic tropes. Heterosexual courtship is a deeply gendered process, and Fosca doesn’t understand which role she is supposed to be playing. As she puts it, “no one has ever taught me how to love.”
Unshackled from these gendered expectations, Fosca chooses to pursue Giorgio the way men are supposed to pursue women: unflinchingly, shamelessly, ruthlessly, uncomfortably. But this audacity is precisely what sets Fosca apart from Clara. Instead of trying to glean scraps of womanhood through Clara, Giorgio is given the opportunity to experience it in its entirety, without skipping the painful parts.
Therefore, Giorgio’s rethinking of how he processes love reads to me as a queer awakening. Clara offers Giorgio a “sensible arrangement scheduled in advance.” Their relationship is a desperate imitation of a marriage, timed around Clara’s husband’s daily schedule. Fosca offers something far more taboo, far more unconventional, and far more exhilarating. Giorgio falls for her because she is a woman that no man would dare love. The passion between him and Fosca is a queer inversion of traditional heterosexual dynamics, a kind of love that can only exist within the realm of gender nonconformity. “No one has ever shown me what love can be like until now.”
“In the end, you’ll finally see what is beautiful about me.”
The more I sit with this story, and now that I’ve gotten over my initial knee-jerk disgust for Fosca, the more I understand that I am uncomfortably similar to her. But that’s okay; the show is astonishingly kind to Fosca. Despite her fate, she ends happily, content with the revelation that she is indeed a person to be loved. Her story is uplifting in a unique, bizarre, and somewhat perverse way.
The great mystery of this show is Fosca: a woman guilty of not being beautiful–or rather, not being womanly. During her first scene, she confides that she is “going through a period of deep melancholy." But it becomes clear that this "period" is her entire life, and she's tortured by an inescapable feeling of unlovability. The men around her despise her, compare her to animals, infantilize her, and mock the very notion that she could ever be loved.
Opposite Fosca is Giorgio. He’s self-assured, kind, respected, and in a comfortable relationship with a married woman. But he too grapples with unbelonging, particularly as he struggles to fit in among every other male character in the show. He doesn’t drink with the other men, and he refuses to participate in their womanizing gossip. The other soldiers consider him aloof and detached and sometimes mock him, a typical reaction to an effeminate presence in a masculine space. Giorgio possesses a femininity that sticks out in his deeply masculine profession: “Imagine that,” he writes of himself, “a soldier who cries.”
Giorgio and Fosca are both gender outcasts, in one way or another. Fosca, however, seems to have come to terms with it while Giorgio remains in denial. She immediately sees that Giorgio is not like the other soldiers: “Perhaps it was the way you walked, the way you spoke to your men.” She cannot name specifically what sets him apart; gender expression is something much more holistic than that. Fosca also notices the mismatch between his feminine demeanor and masculine profession, even asking him, “Why is a man like you in the army?” His response: It was expected of him because of his father- assigned to him at birth. They are the same, they are different. They are drawn to each other because they are both outsiders. The difference is that Fosca understands why she is being allured; Giorgio does not.
“I’ve often wondered if you would love me as much if I were free.”
Giorgio’s lover, Clara, is the opposite of Fosca. She is the light to Fosca’s darkness: safe, gentle, beautiful, and motherly, a conventional model of womanhood. While Fosca is an ungendered social outcast, who’s brief foray into domesticity left her despondent, Clara’s womanhood is unquestioned. The show never depicts her interacting with her husband or child, but we don’t need to see evidence to know that she perfectly fills the role of wife and mother.
The two women present contrasting approaches to gender expression, and Giorgio is caught between them. I think Giorgio’s dilemma is an expression of his own struggle with gender expression. Clara is who he wishes he could be. He is perhaps using Clara as a vehicle for exploring his own femininity. After all, they describe their love as one “that fuses two into one … live as one, breathe as one, feel as one.” But that approach is obviously limited. Giorgio cannot liberate himself through Clara because Clara is not free either. In the end, it is Clara’s refusal to leave behind the heterosexual domesticity of being a wife and mother that leads to Giorgio abandoning her.
But Fosca is not what Giorgio wishes he could be, because Fosca has limited access to womanhood as well. If Fosca is not beautiful, how can she be accepted as a woman? After all, “being beautiful [is] the most important thing a woman can be.” Fosca knows that she’s a woman, but the rest of the world (apart from Giorgio) doesn’t accept her as one. She’s a social reject, poisoned by a fear of unlovability. If not beauty, what does Fosca possibly offer Giorgio?
“Give me a kiss. Yes, I know a woman shouldn’t ask such a thing. A woman shouldn’t have followed a man here. Well, given my appearance, I don’t behave as other women do.”
Fosca’s method of seducing Giorgio is… well, intrusive and kind of terrifying. There’s plenty to unpack about her actions, but what I’m curious about is why she thinks harassment is the right approach. Perhaps it’s that she felt flattered when Ludovic turned his eyes onto her, which is why she reuses some of his pick-up lines on Giorgio. But it’s probably because her only window into the world of romance is through books which surely feature these problematic romantic tropes. Heterosexual courtship is a deeply gendered process, and Fosca doesn’t understand which role she is supposed to be playing. As she puts it, “no one has ever taught me how to love.”
Unshackled from these gendered expectations, Fosca chooses to pursue Giorgio the way men are supposed to pursue women: unflinchingly, shamelessly, ruthlessly, uncomfortably. But this audacity is precisely what sets Fosca apart from Clara. Instead of trying to glean scraps of womanhood through Clara, Giorgio is given the opportunity to experience it in its entirety, without skipping the painful parts.
Therefore, Giorgio’s rethinking of how he processes love reads to me as a queer awakening. Clara offers Giorgio a “sensible arrangement scheduled in advance.” Their relationship is a desperate imitation of a marriage, timed around Clara’s husband’s daily schedule. Fosca offers something far more taboo, far more unconventional, and far more exhilarating. Giorgio falls for her because she is a woman that no man would dare love. The passion between him and Fosca is a queer inversion of traditional heterosexual dynamics, a kind of love that can only exist within the realm of gender nonconformity. “No one has ever shown me what love can be like until now.”
“In the end, you’ll finally see what is beautiful about me.”
The more I sit with this story, and now that I’ve gotten over my initial knee-jerk disgust for Fosca, the more I understand that I am uncomfortably similar to her. But that’s okay; the show is astonishingly kind to Fosca. Despite her fate, she ends happily, content with the revelation that she is indeed a person to be loved. Her story is uplifting in a unique, bizarre, and somewhat perverse way.
June 18, 2026
Lately I've been trying to understand Passion, the most enigmatic of the Sondheim-Lapine musicals, and you'd think that reading it would be helpful, but alas.
In multiple interviews and writings, Sondheim and Lapine have expressed their dismay and perplexion at the infamously scornful reaction this play received during its Broadway run. I wasn't there, so I have tried to approach the piece with open eyes and objectivity; casting the best light I can and trying hard to see what they describe in those interviews... and I just don't.
I'm not foolish enough to criticize Sondheim, or Lapine for that matter. I believe they believe in what they were trying to say. But as a fan, a theater kid, and a reader, I have to say the emperor has no clothes. This just doesn't work, beautiful melodies or no.
There's nothing to root for. Two thirds of the central love triangle are blank ciphers with no discernible personalities, and the third—while by far the most complex and interesting character in the show—is the one whose eccentricities are what the audiences hated the most. There's meat here for good actors (Donna Murphy) but Lapine leaves all the heavy lifting to them.
It's still a Sondheim show, so it's still worth knowing. But it's puzzling that these two masters of the written word were never able to express in the text itself what they obviously saw in the story.
In multiple interviews and writings, Sondheim and Lapine have expressed their dismay and perplexion at the infamously scornful reaction this play received during its Broadway run. I wasn't there, so I have tried to approach the piece with open eyes and objectivity; casting the best light I can and trying hard to see what they describe in those interviews... and I just don't.
I'm not foolish enough to criticize Sondheim, or Lapine for that matter. I believe they believe in what they were trying to say. But as a fan, a theater kid, and a reader, I have to say the emperor has no clothes. This just doesn't work, beautiful melodies or no.
There's nothing to root for. Two thirds of the central love triangle are blank ciphers with no discernible personalities, and the third—while by far the most complex and interesting character in the show—is the one whose eccentricities are what the audiences hated the most. There's meat here for good actors (Donna Murphy) but Lapine leaves all the heavy lifting to them.
It's still a Sondheim show, so it's still worth knowing. But it's puzzling that these two masters of the written word were never able to express in the text itself what they obviously saw in the story.
Read
June 6, 2019Not my favorite Sondheim musical. I read this, listened to the sound track and also saw a performance of it at Signature Theatre. Usually one of these activities will win me over but in this case I found I wasn't pulled in to either the music or the story.
January 10, 2019
I loved every second of it! For any theatre/Sondheim fan I suggest you read it then listen to the cast recording! A 100% must!
December 12, 2019
Not my favorite Sondheim, yet one work that I continually am drawn to and revisit from time to time.
June 26, 2025
2/5 stars. yes spoilers.
This is better as a conversation starter than a musical. Fosca has all of the same traits as The Phantom from POTO if someone gave him a benzo, but the fact that she's a woman is why she receives far less grace from audience members than the Phantom does. She's tortured, possessive, manipulative, vulnerable, self-pitying, considered "monstrous" due to her disability, so desperate for love she obsesses over the first person to extend her kindness – sound familiar? The fact that she's a woman obsessing over a man is particularly uncomfortable to an audience in a cisheteropatriarcal society because it disrupts a societal gender expectation that POTO, as written, never could.
Yet despite the challenges her character poses to expectations of womanhood ("Yes, I know a woman shouldn't ask such a thing. A woman shouldn't have followed a man here. Well, given my appearance, I don't behave as other women do." pg. 90) her monstrosity is still constrained by her gender. She is chronically protected and cared for by the men around her (first her parents, then her cousin, the doctor, and finally Giorgio), so even though she's stalking and sexually harassing Giorgio, her actions are not taken as seriously in the musical as if it were a man engaging in those behaviors. Undoubtedly this is also influenced by her disability, though it shouldn't because someone with sickle cell disease can still shoot a gun, which in a military outpost are certainly in supply. Her actions are also, consequently, not as romanticized. Yet it does not go into any of this, and so the topic feels clumsily handled. I also take issue with the choice to have Fosca's chronic illness basically just be "hysteria" as a consequence of being swindled by a man. Like please be so serious.
Though the musical plays with themes of love and the opposing visions offered by Fosca and Clara, I find their themes a bit more messy than what I think this play wants me to think they are. As much as Fosca allegedly represents reality ("I do not read to search for truth, I know the truth, the truth is hardly what I need" pg. 22) whereas Clara represents ideal illusions ("Love that shuts away the world, that envelops my soul" pg. 33), their actions towards the end oppose each other. Fosca goes after (read: harasses) Giorgio despite all consequences, including knowing that her health will get worse and that he does not want her, and Clara holds off on divorcing her husband/leaving with Giorgio because of the very practical considerations of trying to keep custody of her son. In other words, even though Fosca verbally acknowledges reality, she chooses through her actions to ignore the world around her, whereas Clara verbally ignores reality/highlights talking about their love nest in her rhetoric, she chooses through her actions to consider her practical reality. This makes the final representation of their visions of love messy, Giorgio's declarations of "what love is" contradictory, and thus just makes me sit here scratching my head like ok.....that happened I guess.
Also perhaps this wasn’t clear enough in the rest of this review, but the stalking and sexual harassment really wasn’t necessary to get these themes across. Someone might say “well Fosca’s monstrosity is the point, it’s uncomfortable because she reflects more about ourselves than we want to admit.” You can have a pathetic loser character that’s NOT doing these things. Frankly, she would’ve been more pathetic if she hadn’t been sexually harassing Giorgio and it was actually him growing emotionally intimate with someone society deems so monstrous, struggling with that realization, and her being like “yeah I’m choosing to put up with this, because at least you are honest about struggling with liking me because I’m ugly as opposed to that one guy who swindled me.” I just think that resonates more with people’s own insecurities and traumas around love than stalking does. We also could’ve gotten into the fact that he didn’t really want emotional intimacy with anyone aside from a singular line where Clara says she wonders if he would want her so much if she wasn’t married. It would’ve been uncomfortable. It would’ve been honest. It would’ve been coherent. This is just….eh.
In short, I find the topics interesting, albeit clumsily handled. I would give it 1.5 stars because it was entertaining enough (I had more fun thinking about it) but I decided to give it 2 because I enjoyed Donna Murphy's performance of "I Read."
This is better as a conversation starter than a musical. Fosca has all of the same traits as The Phantom from POTO if someone gave him a benzo, but the fact that she's a woman is why she receives far less grace from audience members than the Phantom does. She's tortured, possessive, manipulative, vulnerable, self-pitying, considered "monstrous" due to her disability, so desperate for love she obsesses over the first person to extend her kindness – sound familiar? The fact that she's a woman obsessing over a man is particularly uncomfortable to an audience in a cisheteropatriarcal society because it disrupts a societal gender expectation that POTO, as written, never could.
Yet despite the challenges her character poses to expectations of womanhood ("Yes, I know a woman shouldn't ask such a thing. A woman shouldn't have followed a man here. Well, given my appearance, I don't behave as other women do." pg. 90) her monstrosity is still constrained by her gender. She is chronically protected and cared for by the men around her (first her parents, then her cousin, the doctor, and finally Giorgio), so even though she's stalking and sexually harassing Giorgio, her actions are not taken as seriously in the musical as if it were a man engaging in those behaviors. Undoubtedly this is also influenced by her disability, though it shouldn't because someone with sickle cell disease can still shoot a gun, which in a military outpost are certainly in supply. Her actions are also, consequently, not as romanticized. Yet it does not go into any of this, and so the topic feels clumsily handled. I also take issue with the choice to have Fosca's chronic illness basically just be "hysteria" as a consequence of being swindled by a man. Like please be so serious.
Though the musical plays with themes of love and the opposing visions offered by Fosca and Clara, I find their themes a bit more messy than what I think this play wants me to think they are. As much as Fosca allegedly represents reality ("I do not read to search for truth, I know the truth, the truth is hardly what I need" pg. 22) whereas Clara represents ideal illusions ("Love that shuts away the world, that envelops my soul" pg. 33), their actions towards the end oppose each other. Fosca goes after (read: harasses) Giorgio despite all consequences, including knowing that her health will get worse and that he does not want her, and Clara holds off on divorcing her husband/leaving with Giorgio because of the very practical considerations of trying to keep custody of her son. In other words, even though Fosca verbally acknowledges reality, she chooses through her actions to ignore the world around her, whereas Clara verbally ignores reality/highlights talking about their love nest in her rhetoric, she chooses through her actions to consider her practical reality. This makes the final representation of their visions of love messy, Giorgio's declarations of "what love is" contradictory, and thus just makes me sit here scratching my head like ok.....that happened I guess.
Also perhaps this wasn’t clear enough in the rest of this review, but the stalking and sexual harassment really wasn’t necessary to get these themes across. Someone might say “well Fosca’s monstrosity is the point, it’s uncomfortable because she reflects more about ourselves than we want to admit.” You can have a pathetic loser character that’s NOT doing these things. Frankly, she would’ve been more pathetic if she hadn’t been sexually harassing Giorgio and it was actually him growing emotionally intimate with someone society deems so monstrous, struggling with that realization, and her being like “yeah I’m choosing to put up with this, because at least you are honest about struggling with liking me because I’m ugly as opposed to that one guy who swindled me.” I just think that resonates more with people’s own insecurities and traumas around love than stalking does. We also could’ve gotten into the fact that he didn’t really want emotional intimacy with anyone aside from a singular line where Clara says she wonders if he would want her so much if she wasn’t married. It would’ve been uncomfortable. It would’ve been honest. It would’ve been coherent. This is just….eh.
In short, I find the topics interesting, albeit clumsily handled. I would give it 1.5 stars because it was entertaining enough (I had more fun thinking about it) but I decided to give it 2 because I enjoyed Donna Murphy's performance of "I Read."
February 13, 2023
Passion has always been one of my least favorite Sondheim shows—while it’s probably better on a technical level than, say, The Frogs or Road Show, I’ve just never been able to really connect with it. I understand why Giorgio eventually becomes attracted to Fosca, but a lot of the story’s impact is lessened for me by the fact that I cannot for the life of me see what Fosca sees in Giorgio that makes her fall for him so hard and fast. For a show that quite literally starts with a bang (haha), it was a bit of a drag.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 2, 2023
I don't think I'll ever understand this show, nor will I ever understand Sondheim's need to adapt it into a musical.
February 12, 2025
This hurt me deep inside
September 12, 2026
"FOSCA:
But though I want to live, I now can leave
With what I never knew:
I'm someone to be loved."
But though I want to live, I now can leave
With what I never knew:
I'm someone to be loved."
October 27, 2026
This is one of the most melancholic pieces of theatre I’ve ever immersed myself into.
December 20, 2011
The libretto of one of my favourite musicals - so beautiful & moving, especially if read whilst listening to the soundtrack (or, in my case a bootleg audio of the Donmar Warehouse production, which is just incredible...) But yeah. Ugh. Perfect. Love it.
June 2, 2024
My first literary cry of the year and it makes too much sense that Stephen Sondheim would make me suffer this way. Genuinely who hurt him so badly that he wrote this because I want to both punch him and kiss him all at once.
April 29, 2012
A tortured story, based upon a Spanish film. A classic.
April 15, 2017
Under-seen, underrated, underappreciated. This needs to be a staple of musical theatre.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews