Stephen Sondheim may be famed for his wit, but many critics over the years have lacerated him for it, finding in it proof of emotional frigidity or even callousness. Reaction to his work largely mirrors that of another revered auteur, Stanley Kubrick, who shares with Sondheim an exacting and interrogative attitude to humanity.

There isn’t much overt wit in Passion, Sondheim’s 1994 musical of romantic obsession, currently receiving a rare staging in Melbourne by Life Like Company. It is certainly not a jocular piece, and what laughs audiences do find often seem like the audible expression of squeamishness. It is there, though, subsumed and ironic.