I was shocked at how many critics mauled Peter Schaffer’s Amadeus during the last London run, calling it no more than a pretentious, unconvicing and historically fanciful melodrama. Shaffer has expressed the spiritual risks involved in creative endeavour with precision, dark humour and riveting monologues better than any modern playwright of comparative success.
The pious, respected Kapellmeister Antonio Salieri (Brian Murray), whose only ambition is to celebrate the Creator’s divine glory through his music, on hearing Mozart discovers that he is no more than a mediocre second-rate talent (a revelation that should not be unfamiliar to many critics!). Shaffer is in a class of his own when articulating such moments of musical reverie. Unfortunately, the music is astonishingly overlooked in this production, and the soft, recorded musical clips fading in and out fail to communicate the empyrean quality of Mozart’s compositions.
Insane with envy, Salieri sets about in diabolical Machiavellian style to destroy Mozart and ‘block” God for mocking him through “the mouth of an obscene child”. Nicholas Pauling is more persuasive when playing the mortally ill Mozart than when given free rein in the first half as an overly camp and therefore self-defeating impish bawd. At no point can we beleive in his genius. The entire court is too foppish and playing to the gallery (or school children audiences), making Mozart an excessive variation rather than an affront to starchy pomp. This should remain the province of the well gauged and delightful Jeroen Kranenberg and Craig Leo as the gossipy venticelli.
As the Emperor Joseph II, Jeremy Crutchley is as always magnetic. Mary Dreyer is extraordinary in capturing the audience in her wordless part as Signora Salieiri. Tinarie van Wyk Loots as Mozart’s wife Constanze gives an altogether shallow performance.
Fine costumes and wigs, and the hand of John Caviggia in period movement instruction and make-up advice, provides for an opulent and stylish staging. Good use is made of the depth of the Baxter main stage, but the set is not in the same league as the rest of the production values. In the second half it encumbers the stage, and the ugly exposed metal structure on the sides stands distractingly like a piece of scaffolding while Mozart has his death scene.
The pièce de résistance is Murray. It is almost a one-man show. He delivers an astounding virtuoso performance, effortlessly dropping his register as the aged Salieri, hypnotic as we revel horrified yet enthralled by his evil machinations, subtle in his duplicitous exchanges with Mozart, and utterly convincing in his apostasy – his pain is palpable and moving. The playwright could not have hoped for better justice to a morally ambiguous and treacherously complex part. I would go further and say that Murray delicately balances and compensates for difficulties in the script, where a less skilled actor will easily fail.
