John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013

[Rob]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013#1

Posted: 1/13/12 at 12:10pm

Click Here to Read John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013

[maila]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #2

Posted: 1/13/12 at 12:35pm

i love this musical, but please mr doyle, don't make fosca play the flute in her deathbed.

[whatever2]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #2

Posted: 1/13/12 at 12:38pm

i loved this from the playbill.com article:

> The production is not expected to employ Doyle's signature directorial approach of actors playing their own instruments; Doyle does not exclusively use that idea for his work.

hope someone reminds Doyle of that.

"You, sir, are a moron." (PlayItAgain)

[ljay889]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #3

Posted: 1/13/12 at 12:44pm

Wow, it's a long time from now, but I'll finally get to see a production of this show! Let's hope they stick with the plan to not use the actor/musician concept.

[Dubliner]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #4

Posted: 1/13/12 at 1:02pm

Does this mean then that the Donmar production can't transfer to New York. I would have expected people will be clamouring to see Elena Roger's Fosca once they've seen her in Evita.

[RippedMan]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #5

Posted: 1/13/12 at 1:40pm

Maybe she'll work with CSC on Passion? I'd love to see this show in such an intimate setting. I just hope they get a real actress for Fosca.

[luvtheEmcee]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #6

Posted: 1/13/12 at 1:52pm

Ahhhhh I want to go to there.

A work of art is an invitation to love.

[givesmevoice]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #7

Posted: 1/13/12 at 2:05pm

I would LOVE to see Elena Roger as Fosca, but I also know that Laura Benanti has mentioned wanting to play her and think she would be incredible as well.

When I see the phrase "the ____ estate", I imagine a vast mansion in the country full of monocled men and high-collared women receiving letters about productions across the country and doing spit-takes at whatever they contain. -Kad

[morosco]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #8

Posted: 1/13/12 at 2:08pm

The working title is "Acapella Passion"

[artscallion]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #9

Posted: 1/13/12 at 2:25pm

Very excited for this. Some of Sondheim's most beautiful music, I think. I've seen this done in an intimate setting and think that works very well for the piece. Am also relieved to hear we won't have Fosca tromping around with a glockenspiel or something.

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion.

[HistoryBoy2]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #10

Posted: 1/13/12 at 3:19pm

Doyle's recent production of Road Show wasn't actor-muso and it was pretty great. I could see him doing a similarly intimate production of Passion with good results.

And Laura Benanti as Fosca? GENIUS. How about Nathan Lane as Giorgio and Lee Wilkof as Clara while we're at it?

[newintown]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #11

Posted: 1/13/12 at 3:58pm

The last person a slow and quiet show like Passion needs at the helm is "I Can Put An Entire Audience To Sleep" Doyle. Whenever he doesn't put instruments in the characters hands, he seems to be at a loss to do anything at all (Road Show was one of the biggest snooze fests I ever saw in New York).

[Mattbrain]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #12

Posted: 1/13/12 at 5:00pm

I've never hated the actor-musician approach. I've always had a pro-con attitude towards these productions. But I've gotta admit, I'm relieved he'll be doing it as a straight piece.

Butters, go buy World of Warcraft, install it on your computer, and join the online sensation before we all murder you. --Cartman: South Park ATTENTION FANS: I will be played by James Barbour in the upcoming musical, "BroadwayWorld: The Musical."

[SondheimFan5]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #13

Posted: 1/13/12 at 5:32pm

I think it has the potential to be quite beautiful. And it's a great piece, will be interesting to see a REAL chamber version of it.

[SondheimFan5]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #14

Posted: 1/13/12 at 5:41pm

I did not like the Sweeney actor-musician concept at all; to paraphrase what Jerry Herman said, Sweeney is such a beautiful OPERA and Jonathan Tunick's orchestrations were perfect in the original. I'm not expecting to love Doyle's Merrily when I see it in March...then again, I didn't expect to like Company with actor-musicians, and I loved Company and thought it was perfect with the actor-musicians.

All said...I'm thrilled that Passion will not be done with the actor-musician concept.

[bjh2114]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #15

Posted: 1/13/12 at 5:52pm

Does this mean then that the Donmar production can't transfer to New York. I would have expected people will be clamouring to see Elena Roger's Fosca once they've seen her in Evita.

I found that production to be quite bland. I didn't care for Elena as Fosca. Scarlett Strallen really stole the show for me as Clara, but David Thaxton was quite good as well.

While she's too old for it now, I would kill to see Kelli O'Hara take a crack at Clara.

[Ugly Duckling]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #16

Posted: 1/13/12 at 6:32pm

Well, I thought the Donmar production was fantastic and I'm glad New York is getting an intimate production/staging of the show now, too, as I believe it's the only way for it to work... and clearly, so does Sondheim, considering he did call the 2010 revival in London the 'perfect' production of Passion and devoted an entire chapter in his book to Thaxton's performance as Giorgio - something I found quite remarkable but thoroughly deserved as he was phenomenal (and phenomenally well-cast, as was the whole show).

[artscallion]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #17

Posted: 1/13/12 at 7:49pm

"While she's too old for it now, I would kill to see Kelli O'Hara take a crack at Clara."

O'hara is 36. Marin Mazzie was only a year younger than that when she played it.

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion.

[SporkGoddess]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #18

Posted: 1/13/12 at 8:01pm

Right, Clara's supposed to be older, I always assumed she was in her 30s.

Jimmy, what are you doing here in the middle of the night? It's almost 9 PM!

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #19

Posted: 1/14/12 at 12:50pm

Yeah, not really sure how O'Hara is too old for the role. She's the perfect age, if anything, she comes across as younger than her age on stage. I'd love to see her as Clara opposite Benanti's Fosca.

"Some people can thrive and bloom living life in a living room, that's perfect for some people of one hundred and five. But I at least gotta try, when I think of all the sights that I gotta see, all the places I gotta play, all the things that I gotta be at"

[SondheimFan5]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #20

Posted: 1/14/12 at 1:07pm

Melissa Errico as Clara?

How about Jan Maxwell as Fosca?

[RippedMan]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #21

Posted: 1/14/12 at 1:50pm

CSC always has a way of getting an all-star cast, so I'm excited to see who they announce. Sad I'll have to wait a year. Never been to CSC, so maybe this will be my first time. Have they done musicals before?

[EricMontreal22]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #22

Posted: 1/18/12 at 10:45pm

Doyle has done some truly dreadful productionsss without the actor/musician concept (which I'm not a fan of but I did still like his Sweeney and Company's well enough I suppose). His Mahoganny was *awful* at least on tv as was his Stratford production of Kiss Me Kate live. I wish I could have seen Road Show, I've grown to love the score, but the clips seem... not great.

Sigh, I wish they had transfered the Donmar production which I've heard nothing but raves about (except from the one poster here who found it bland)

[AC126748]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #23

Posted: 1/19/12 at 10:36am

Does anybody else think Leslie Kritzer could make an amazing Fosca? It's a departure from how I think we normally perceive her--as a natural comedienne, and one of the best around--but her fine dramatic work in A CATERED AFFAIR has long left me wanting to see her in a more serious role.

"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe." -John Guare, Landscape of the Body

[Michael Bennett]

John Doyle to Helm PASSION at Classic Stage Company in 2013 #24

Posted: 1/19/12 at 10:43am

I'm not sure that Kritzer has the other-worldly eerie-ethereal quality that I tend to associate with the part, but who knows.

How about Julia Murney?

I think Melissa Errico is a really interesting idea for Clara though. That character should be in her mid 30s, in my opinion. She's not a young woman; which is part of what makes her romance with Georgio (who I've always assumed is several years younger) all the more interesting.