Passion and Cinderella Try Opposite Approaches to the Musical;Belleville Tries One's Patience

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Comments (0) By Michael Feingold Wednesday, Mar 6 2013

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Joan Marcus

Passion play: Melissa Errico and Ryan Silverman

Location Info

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Classic Stage Company

136 E. 13th St.
New York, NY 10003

Category: Performing Arts Venues

Region: Union Square

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Details

Passion
By James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim
Classic Stage Company
136 East 13th Street
212-252-3101, classicstage.org

Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella
By Douglas Carter Beane, Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers
Broadway Theatre
1681 Broadway
212-239-6200,cinderellaonbroadway.com

Belleville
By Amy Herzog
New York Theatre Workshop
79 East 4th Street
212-460-5475, nytw.org

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A newlywed American couple (Maria Dizzia and Greg Keller), who apparently don't know much about each other, have moved to Paris, where he's doing medical research. Heavy hints get dropped about her family troubles, his money and job troubles, and their joint troubles with sex and drugs and their landlords, the Senegalese couple downstairs (Pascale Armand and Phillip James Brannon). Clearly, somebody's lying, and somebody might get violent. As the stresses pile up, it all starts to resemble a two-sided hipster re-edit of Gaslight. But keeping secrets from your spouse was easier back when Ingrid Bergman wore Victorian gowns than it is in the age of TMI. They've supposedly been in Belleville four months; it's hard to believe that nobody smelled a rat earlier.

Under the skullduggery, Herzog is struggling to convey something about contemporary life and how it can make love or compassion go awry. She'll surely find better ways to express it in future works. Anne Kauffman's tender, soft-paced direction, striving to avoid melodramatics, tones everything down to the point where the performances almost disappear; you could hardly call what transpires onstage acting.