“Where’s the passion?” screams legendary actress Diana Lee (Glenn Close). It sets the tone for this examination of elite New Yorkers whose intersecting lives are falling apart. Lee’s open marriage is on the skids yet she makes no secret of flirting with a young actor who lives in the same building as her daughter, a photographer wary about her impending marriage to a model turned lawyer, who in turn has issues with a journalist, the actor and, of course, Diana. Destiny is on a collision course. Heights is the kind of story that unravels like a  hybrid episode of Murder She Wrote and Sex in the City, just without the sex. There’s an Altman sensibility to the extremely eye-catching production as writer Amy Fox pushes her characters to reveal themselves and their interdependent relationships. “Love is a treacherous business,” she says.

Blessed with a first-rate cast, there’s much pleasure in watching our own concerns refracted through their prism. It’s a familiar device, one with which Jane Austen achieved greatness, yet it suffers from characters that are not particularly full-bodied. Ciphers of their emotional baggage, they’re people-lite, people who comfort one another by quoting Shakespeare. And as attractive as that might be, how many of your friends throw their arms around you in moment of despair while mumbling the gooey bits from Henry V? Nonetheless, Heights is an enjoyable drama that has much to say and says it well. Even if the secrets it tries to keep are laid open early, there’s a cosy sadism in watching the discomfort, wondering how long it will take for them to work it out. Therein lies the passion, Diana.

// COLIN FRASER