Love and Loin

By T.E. Kalem

PASSION by Peter Nichols

"Is it possible to love any human being without being torn limb from limb? No one was ever made wretched in a brothel; there need be nothing angst-forming about the sexual act. Yet. . . when sexual emotion increases to passion, then something starts growing which possesses a life of its own and which, easily though it can be destroyed by ignorance and neglect, will die in agony and go on dying after it is dead."

--Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave

This might be the text on which Peter Nichols elaborates in his scorching comedy of raddled mores in the late 20th century. The tale Passion tells is almost as old as drama is, the eternal triangle of husband, wife and the younger other woman. Despite the hoary age of its theme, the play is clever, impudent, erotic and an emotional demolition kit.

After 25 years of marriage, James (Bob Gunton) and Eleanor (Cathryn Damon) are in "a sort of run-down monogamy," poking about in the embers of their love. He is a restorer of modern art ("Not that wide a field, you know. More like a kitchen garden"), and she participates ardently in church-music concerts. By contrast, Kate (Roxanne Hart), a photographer, is just 25 and loin directed, an amoral minx spawned by the permissive society. She seduces James with a lingering kiss ("her tongue straight to the back of my mouth, circling like a snake inside. . .").

British Playwright Nichols' twist is that almost before the affair begins, the triangle becomes a pentangle. James and Eleanor have alter egos, played by Frank Langella and E. Katherine Kerr. These are id-like private selves who ironically, amusingly and sometimes heartrendingly blurt out and unmask the hypocrisies, fears, desires and fantasies the public selves are hiding. This is a device very much like the one Eugene O'Neill used in Strange Interlude. It can be a potent mode of psychological revelation, al though on occasion it can be, and is, slightly confusing.

At his most skillful, Nichols tellingly evokes the Joycean interior monologue in which the tingling shock effect is that of making the holy ritual of the confessional an open secret. In one scene, James is at a one-woman show of Kate's photographs, and his alter ego speaks: "Shall I say it then, in front of all these people? She took my hand and placed it high on her thigh, raising her skirt and slightly opening her legs . . . And all the time we kept talking in loud voices about Cartier-Bresson and was photography an art." Using the same device in scalding counterpoint, Nichols has James and his alter ego collaborate on a steamy love letter to Kate at the same moment that it is being read aloud by Eleanor's alter ego to Eleanor and the person who intercepted it: a bitter middle-aged friend (Stephanie Gordon) whose late husband Kate had also stolen.

In England, Passion's title was Passion Play. The music of the Dies Irae boomingly punctuates some scenes, and the drama has a neoreligious subtext. James and Eleanor proclaim themselves atheists, but they are wistfully haunted by the death of God. While ranting about his right to "a flash of happiness before the void," James curses Christianity and Jesus Christ for depaganizing mankind: "The Christians took over the language of sexual emotion for their own purposes --passion, love, adoration, ecstasy . . . those words are now more meaningless than the so-called dirty words."

Passion requires directorial fine-tuning, and, for some unknown reason, it does not receive that from Marshall W. Mason, who has proved admirably sensitive on any number of past occasions. The complexity of the intertwining roles called for more rehearsal time than the actors apparently got. Bob Gunton is a shade too stilted as James, hoping perhaps that physical constriction could simulate advanced middle age. Frank Langella moves with grand assurance across Broadway's Longacre stage, ranging from impish mischief to laceration of soul. As Eleanor and her alter ego, Damon and Kerr lend their roles compelling honesty, and Roxanne Hart is a five-alarm sexual conflagration.

As this season comes to a close, Passion proves to be its most intellectually stimulating and emotionally unsettling offering. -- By T.E. Kalem This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.