New Melbourne Production for Sondheim Musical PASSION

Life Like Company will present a new production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Tony Award winning musical PASSION, playing four nights only at The Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne from 5-8 November, 2014.

The complex landscape of the human heart is the subject of PASSION, a haunting, intensely emotional musical by the creators of Into The Woods and Sunday In The Park With George.

The original Broadway production of PASSION received 10 TONY Awards including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score.

At a remote military outpost in 1863 Italy, a handsome army captain Giorgio, is separated from his beautiful - but married – mistress, Clara. He is forced to re- evaluate his beliefs about love when he becomes the object of the obsessive, unrelenting passions of Fosca, his Colonel’s plain, sickly cousin.

Life Like Company’s new Melbourne production features Kane Alexander (Urinetown, Hair, Les Miserables) as Giorgio; Green Room Award winning musical theatre star and recording artist Silvie Paladino (Chess, Miss Saigon, Les Miserables) in the role of Clara; Theresa Borg (Les Miserables, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera) as Fosca; as well as stage and screen legend John O’May (The Last Confession, The Phantom of the Opera, A Little Night Music) as Doctor Tambourri.

The production also features talented musical theatre performers Mark Dickinson (Hamlet, Chess), Jolyon James (Moonshadow, Shane Warne: The Musical), Cameron MacDonald (Miss Saigon, Jersey Boys), Adam Murphy (Guys and Dolls, The Graduate), Tod Strike (Love Never Dies, South Pacific) and Troy Sussman (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Mary Poppins), who round out the cast in this new production.

Director Neil Gooding will bring the production to life in Melbourne.

“PASSION is a musical theatre masterpiece from one of the greatest composers the world of musical theatre has ever known. The cast that we have assembled is comprised of some of the finest musical theatre performers in Australia, and I can't wait to see them all breathe life into these incredible characters,” says Gooding.

Musical Director of this production is Guy Simpson, who will soon be in Melbourne at the helm of The Production Company’s Guys and Dolls, and is also known for conducting a great body of work including The Phantom of the Opera, Love Never Dies and Miss Saigon.

Bold, unexpected and thrilling, PASSION is one of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's most emotional works. Intimate, raw, erotic and dark, it explores universal yet often unspoken truths.

The sweeping, romantic score (Sondheim describes it as one long rhapsody) accompanies an intelligent, thought-provoking book that bears James Lapine’s trademark lyricism and a host of well-drawn characters.

Life Like Company is born of the team behind Life Like Touring, firmly established as one of Australia’s leading family theatre producers, with their productions touring the USA, Middle East, Asia and Europe.

PASSION represents the company’s first major foray into the mainstream adult world of musical theatre, launching Life Like Company with a provocative and captivating premiere production.

Tickets are on sale from Tuesday 8 July from Arts Centre Melbourne Box Office (03) 9281 8000 or via www.passionthemusical.com.au

Image: Silvie Paladino, Kane Alexander and Theresa Borg. Photographer: Kashka Jamieson (Verve Portraits)

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