Is This What You Call Love?
Passion, Compassion, and Baby Reindeer
Netflix has a new word-of-mouth hit on its hands. Baby Reindeer was viewed 56.5 million times in its first 26 days on the platform. In the next couple of weeks, it is on track to enter the top 10 most-viewed English-language Netflix shows of all time, joining the likes of Stranger Things, Wednesday, and The Queen’s Gambit.
The premise of Baby Reindeer is simple; the questions it poses are deeply, dreadfully complex. Donny Dunn, a struggling comedian, is relentlessly stalked and harassed by a middle-aged woman named Martha. Written by and co-starring Richard Gadd, the show is an unflinching account of his own lived experience, an ordeal to which he first gave creative voice as a one-man play at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe.
I watched the first episode of Baby Reindeer on May 9th 2024—precisely 30 years to the day that Sondheim and Lapine’s Passion opened on Broadway. This was entirely by chance—but after realizing the date, I did find myself pondering both miniseries and musical at the same time. Like George in Act II of Sunday, I was soon attempting to see a connection.
And in broad terms, that connection seems fairly clear. At the heart of each show (and without revealing any plot spoilers for Baby Reindeer) is a deeply troubled woman with particularly intense feelings toward a man who does not—initially at least, in the case of Passion—share them. In both cases, these feelings are sparked by a small act of kindness: In Passion, Giorgio lends Fosca some of his books; Baby Reindeer’s Donny, working as a bartender at The Hawley Arms in Camden, offers Martha a free cup of tea. There is an epistolary aspect to both works too. Much in Passion is expressed through letters between Giorgio and his lover Clara, a level of intimacy Fosca herself tries to simulate in “I Wish I Could Forget You.” Martha, meanwhile, sends Donny around 41,000 emails, some of which we see as the show unfolds; between scenes, they act as unsettling punctuation marks.
Crucially, neither Passion nor Baby Reindeer offers a one-dimensional portrait of a dangerously obsessive woman and a wholly virtuous man. Donny is a victim, to be sure—but a victim whose own actions are sometimes irresponsible, and occasionally cruel. Creative autobiography can all too easily become “a kind of propaganda of the self,” to use poet Luke Kennard’s phrase. Not so here. Richard Gadd has not shied away from his own missteps; it is at times a hideously unflattering self-portrait, and the series is all the stronger for it. Giorgio and Fosca’s relationship develops differently, of course: the love between them is ultimately not Fosca’s alone. Nonetheless, along the way, both men are forced to ask the question that Giorgio directly poses: “Is this what you call love?”
In Passion, that question comes during Scene Ten, after Fosca insists that Giorgio kiss her. When he refuses to do so, she starts to incessantly kiss his hand. Giorgio pulls away and the following words tumble out:
Is this what you call love?
This endless and insatiable
Smothering
Pursuit of me,
You think that this is love?
Giorgio, who has thus far been scrupulously accommodating toward Fosca, mindful of her vulnerability, finally snaps. If you have seen Baby Reindeer, you will know that Giorgio’s precise words could just as easily be Donny’s. And Sondheim, master of nuance, is careful to ensure that even this most viscous of outbursts is not one-dimensional.
Giorgio continues:
I’m sorry that you’re lonely,
I’m sorry that you want me as you do.
I’m sorry that I fail to feel
The way you wish me to feel,
I’m sorry that you’re ill,
I’m sorry you’re in pain,
I’m sorry that you aren’t beautiful.
But yes, I wish you’d go away
And leave me alone!
The first several lines here can be read as an expression of genuine pity, but there is a rhetorical cruelty in this pile-up of “I’m sorry” statements. And we feel the sting of these words melodically too: “Is This What You Call Love?” is in fact a somewhat turbocharged variation of music that we hear Fosca sing toward the end of Scene Three, beginning at “To speak to me of love…” By ensuring that Giorgio is musically imitating Fosca as he says his piece, Sondheim emphasizes the fact that these words are intended to wound: imitative mockery is among the most infuriating, hurtful argumentative gambits to find yourself faced with.
In this section of “Is This What You Call Love?” I’m reminded of Inspector Javert’s words as he stands on the Pont au Change, moments before his suicide: “I’ll spit his pity right back in his face,” he says of Jean Valjean. Giorgio is certainly spitting his own pity in Fosca’s face here. It is unthinkable at this moment in the show that Giorgio and Fosca’s relationship will develop in the way that it does, that her love for him will ultimately be reciprocated—but perhaps Sondheim has already hidden a clue in plain sight. At the very beginning of Passion, Giorgio and Clara declare, “How quickly pity leads to love.” It is, in fact, the very first line in the show that is shared by two characters.
Giorgio goes on:
Everywhere I turn,
There you are.
This is not love,
But some kind of obsession.
Will you never learn
When too far is too far,
Have you no concern
For what I feel,
What I want?
These are completely reasonable points to make, and an entirely legitimate question to ask—on the page. But again, these rapid-fire lines come across as unsparing, unyielding, and petulant. Giorgio circles again and again around a central note, like a musical finger-wag—or the twist of a knife.
There are three widely available recordings of Passion. As this “Everywhere I turn” section begins, the original cast recording maintains the same tempo as was heard previously. But, thrillingly, the other two versions speed up considerably at this point—despite no explicit indication to that effect in the score. I really love this choice. Particularly in the 1997 London cast recording, it is as if Giorgio’s words are hurtling toward Fosca at a hundred miles per hour. And he doesn’t stop there:
Love is what you earn
And return
When you care for another
So much that the other’s
Set free.
Don’t you see?
Can’t you understand?Love’s not a constant demand,
It’s a gift you bestow.
Love isn’t sudden surrender,
It’s tender and slow.
It must grow.
As you listen to Giorgio at this juncture, are you reminded of any other Sondheim numbers? Two moments stand out for me. The first of these occurs in Follies, during “Could I Leave You?” Specifically, I’m thinking of the section that begins “Leave the lies unconcealed / And the wounds never healed”—fitting words, as it happens, for both Passion and Baby Reindeer at various times. But listen to how Sondheim sets these words (by clicking on the lyrics themselves just above). Again, the melody revolves around a central pitch, like a predator circling its prey.
The second Sondheim number I’m reminded of when listening to “Is This What You Call Love?” is Into the Woods’s “Last Midnight.” As the Witch builds toward her final boom-crunch, she too circles a series of central notes almost obsessively, with increasing verve and vigor. Both of these passages, like their counterpart in Passion, are in a brisk triple time that we feel as having one beat per measure. This propulsive, slightly disconcerting waltz feel brings to mind the idea of a danse macabre. Have a listen to the work bearing that name by Saint-Saëns if you want to hear a good classical model for this. And the notion of a dance with death feels just as appropriate in “Is This What You Call Love?” as it does in “Last Midnight.” When Fosca later tells Giorgio that “I would live and I would die for you,” she is not indulging in amorous hyperbole. It is difficult to be as specific as I’d like about Baby Reindeer on this point without risking spoilers, but suffice it to say that the stakes in that show feel at times equally existential.
Giorgio continues:
Yet everywhere I go,
You appear,
Or I know
You are near.
This is not love,
Just a need for possession.
Call it what you will,
This is not love,
This is the reverse,
Like a curse,
Something out of control.
I’ve begun to fear
For my soul…
If the comparison with “Last Midnight” was already tempting before reading these final lines, it is almost irresistible now. As Giorgio speaks of curses and souls, our sense of what he means by “possession” subtly shifts in retrospect: it slips from referring merely to control, seeming also to imply something darker, supernatural even. And there is indeed something unsettling about this sequence in Passion. Watching on, we are well aware that there is ample justification for much of what Giorgio says. Not only that, but it is easy to empathize even with the manner in which he addresses Fosca; we sense that he has exhausted all other approaches and must now speak unequivocally, even if that means a degree of cruelty. But we equally recognize in Fosca a near-broken woman—a woman who grows weaker with every verbal blow. We empathize with Giorgio, but in our empathy there is also unease.
And so it is with Baby Reindeer. You see this extraordinary story unfold; you are gripped by every twist and turn; you watch on, often dumbstruck, as Richard Gadd relives this deeply disturbing, traumatic period of his own life on screen. And then you consider Martha. A woman whose own “endless and insatiable smothering pursuit” of Donny causes untold harm, and whose actions as the series progresses approach the realm of the unforgivable. Yet the real-life Martha remains a human being. And as fellow human beings, we know all too well that our flaws flow so often from our frailties. We know too that the line between vulnerability and vice, between victimhood and villainy, can be gossamer-thin. Witches can be right. Giants can be good.
It is tempting, comforting even, to dismiss Giorgio’s question as merely rhetorical. Is this what you call love? Really? Really? But both Passion and Baby Reindeer invite us to consider something altogether more complicated: what if the answer is yes?
Listening links:
As mentioned above, there are three widely available recordings of “Is This What You Call Love?” Personally, I would recommend listening first to Michael Ball as Giorgio, in the 1997 London cast recording:
Then enjoy Ryan Silverman’s Giorgio in the 2013 New York cast recording:
And then have a listen to the original recording, which features Jere Shea as Giorgio. This is not currently available on YouTube, but is easy enough to find on all major streaming platforms.