Donna Murphy commits psychological warfare in a corset and it's *devastating*.
Giorgio, a young soldier, is in love with Clara. But they are separated when Giorgio is posted far away, where he meets the unhappy, unhealthy, and unattractive Fosca, who develops a passionate love for Giorgio and tries to make him love her. This rendition of Stephen Sondheim's Tony Award-winning musical was recorded on the stage with it's original all-star Broadway cast. Originally broadcast as part of "American Playhouse" on PBS (season thirteen, episode six).
Acting
Donna Murphy's Fosca: theater's most terrifying ingenue performance.
Writing
Sondheim's most underrated score—no earworms, just wounds.
Direction
Lapine's spare staging makes the intimacy feel almost illegal.
Director
James Lapine
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This 1996 PBS broadcast preserved the original 1994 Broadway cast after the show's premature closure—Murphy won her first Tony for a role that ran only 280 performances.
Sondheim adapted Ettore Scola's 1981 film 'Passione d'amore,' itself based on Iginio Ugo Tarchetti's 1869 novel—making this a triple-layered meditation on Italian Romanticism's sickliest impulses.
US
