Passion (1994), a one-act chamber musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, explores obsessive love and emotional vulnerability in 1860s Italy. It follows handsome soldier Giorgio, who is torn between his loving, married mistress Clara and Fosca, his colonel’s sickly, intense cousin who obsessively falls in love with him.

​

Passion to Danny and I felt like a show about a uniquely tragic woman stuck in a very masculine world. As the director, Danny, wanted to pull the show away from its Victorian setting towards a modern look. I found the underlining theme of nationalism exceptionally present in the musical in the world of soldiers that underlies the love story at the musical's heart. As such the underlying nationalism of Italian unification morphed to a world of fascist Brutalism. In looking for something to define our militant environment I discovered powerful images of US Soldier erecting and interacting with giant cement borders from the Iraq War. These plinths then came to define the harsh world Fosca inhabited. With the barriers being able to melt away and show dreamlike figures on an elevated plane through out the show.